In Sickness and In Health
Nina Berman, Untitled, 2006.
This image by Nina Berman is from her well-received series called “Marine Wedding,” which is featured in the Whitney’s biennial until May 30. She documents the re-entry of an injured Marine from the Iraqi war and then his marriage to the fiancee who waited at home for him. I first saw Berman’s work when one of my students brought one of these photographs to class to discuss. It was the couple’s wedding portrait and it showed the Marine’s disfigured and reconstructed face looking tenderly at his tense bride. She couldn’t quite look at him. We couldn’t look away.
This image is equally compelling, but it avoids the shock value of the other photograph by keeping the Marine’s damaged face from us. Instead this image stays formal in both senses: it reveals the formal connection of the marriage vow in the intertwined hands (is that gleam her just-visible wedding ring?) as well as the formal shape of the triangular composition. The eye is directed upward, to pause at the scarred skull of the veteran. Yet the image is balanced and stable too, filling the frame and implying that this couple will survive.
In fact, the Marine survived this defacement, but the marriage did not. A caption at the Whitney informs us that the couple separated after four months. Does that change the way we read this photograph? Does any of this change the way we read the war?
>
In: contemporary, documentary, portraiture, war photography · Tagged with: Nina Berman, Whitney Biennial 2010