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Monday, February 13, 2012
April 10, 2009

Gitmo Details #1: Club Survivor

06_csims_gitmo.jpg

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In conjunction with Daylight Magazine , BNN takes a look at a series of images by photographer Christopher Sims taken at Guantanamo Bay. The photos were recently the subject of an exhibition at Civilian Art Projects, and are also featured in a Daylight multimedia podcast viewable here. Given BNN’s unique mission to fix on, delve into and create discussion around single images, we feel Chris’ photos, taken in 2006 and capturing atmosphere and character through mundanity, actually grow more curious as Guantanamo — having outlived the Bush Administration — retains its notoriety. Chris expands on the details with a few notes.

This is a photograph of Club Survivor.

At first glance, it could be any beach shack bar in any out-of-the-way place in the Caribbean. It’s the type of bar where people would hang out on Friday night, or unwind after work. It’s located near Camp Delta and it’s where guards might spend their free time. Looking closely at the building, we see hand-painted iguanas and palm trees and hand-painted signs. There are four windows into the bar, but we can’t see in. Instead we see reflections – reflections of the ocean, but also in two of the windows, reflections of flood lights used for security at the prison.

And, most prominently, hand-painted on the side of building, perhaps about five feet across, is a large painting of an old-fashioned rifle. It’s a painting based on the Combat Infantryman Badge. Whoever reproduced it on the side of this building managed to achieve something I found quite remarkable – to make the painting in a way that it is both menacing and child-like at the same time.

Christopher Sims teaches photography and multimedia at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. He worked previously as a photo archivist at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

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  • http://profile.typepad.com/6p00e5523476cc8834 DennisQ

    That’s not a Combat Infantry Badge – it’s the more prosaic Expert Infantry Badge. The CIB is surrounded with laurels, but the EIB is just the rifle. And if you squint you’ll see that the unit is calling it an EIB, not a CIB.
    I don’t know the significance of what we’re seeing here. Could it be that Guantanamo guards aren’t considered to be in combat? Hard to believe that with everyone pulling two and three tours in Iraq that it’s necessary to award the EIB. It’s usually awarded only in peacetime.

  • s

    The rusted garbage can is what really makes this image sing.

  • http://profile.typepad.com/johntanton jtfromBC

    That’s Teddy’s rifle -
    On San Juan Hill: U.S. glory, Cuban humiliation
    http://www.cleveland.com/world/index.ssf/2008/11/on_san_juan_hill_us_glory_cuba.html

  • http://profile.typepad.com/Serr8d Serr8d

    – to make the painting in a way that it is both menacing and child-like at the same time.

    Menacing? Child-like? Really? A single-shot, flintlock rifle of the type that’s not been handled by anyone on that island, menacing? Those guards trained with highly sophisticated, fully-auto arms up to .50 caliber, all excellent shots, and you stretch to find ‘menacing’ in that imagery? And, ‘childlike’, you let your kids play with guns?
    Hmmmph. Oh, that’s not Teddy’s rifle, either. Flintlocks were finished with the advent of the percussion cap in 1805, and the cartridge in 1850’s.

    Those types of flintlocks are given by the NRA to their banquet speakers; Rush Limbaugh (1993) and Glenn Beck (last year) both received those as gifts.
    You might be better off doing more research or less analysis. Take your pick.

  • MariaLetter

    2subtleRU?
    Garcia writes
    2anyweetalkat(r)oll

  • http://profile.typepad.com/johntanton jtfromBC

    Thanks for the advice, you have encouraged me to improve in both areas and hopefully you’ll stick around to monitor and continue to take an interest in my comments.

  • lytom

    Christopher Sims presentation of his archive photos for Guantanamo is excellent. The speech and the music accompanying photos are subdued, but the words and images are important. Portrait without people is an excellent accusation and a careful presentation for the posterity to judge what kind of culture has ruled on Guantanamo. Given Christopher Sims previous archivist work, it is chilling. The flag in the places is like an emblem branding everyone who touched this place.

  • Grunt

    Agree, it’s not CIB. It is a list of the 2005 recipients of the EIB in that unit, if you look closely. Looks like there’s another similar kind of plaque to it’s left, listing other recipients, probably from a previous year. I think that the unit is just recognizing its EIB recipients.
    Guantanamo guards are definitely not in combat, in my opinion – and from what I remember about what type of combat situation it takes to be awarded a CIB. That indeed may be why the EIB is important.
    But I’d also suggest that maybe the EIB is gaining in significance, since I imagine that there are a whole lot of people with CIB’s now. The EIB is earned by passing a lot of strict tests, whereas the CIB is awarded based on how long an infantryman was in a situation designated as a combat theater. Since you don’t get to put the EIB on your uniform after you’ve gotten a CIB (which takes its place), it is kind of nice to have somewhere to tout your achievement.

  • The Cosmic Surfer

    Obviously you haven’t a CLUE as to what the author said. THE RIFLE AS SUBJECT HERE IS both menacing and childlike – the art is untrained and that at a level of one who may have drawn as a hobby up to about Jr high age then quit….basic primitive in style, perspective and flat, floating in mid air as a simple symbolic subject with no setting, purpose or relationship to a beach shack in the caribbean- ergo Childlike, not childish…The menacing is the subject matter bringing the edge of violence into the imagined serenity of the setting….Perfect juxtaposition to explain a carribean island paradise with a menacing core.
    Think before you throw out your irrational projection…. Your statement says more about you than it does about the photo or what the author stated

  • http://profile.typepad.com/Serr8d Serr8d

    ‘Cosmic Surfer’ (’sneer quotes’, yes; talk about something that says more about you than your post. Can I call you ‘Cosmic Clown’? Thanks!)
    Cosmic Clown, you refer to that artwork on the wall as ‘untrained’ and ‘Childlike’. Did you not read the post yourself, and comprehend that the painting is a faithful reproduction of the origninal?

    It’s a painting based on the Combat Infantryman Badge.

    I think it’s a very fair reproduction of that badge’s artwork. Of course the artist could’ve done something a bit more ‘modern’…

    Oh, and that Carribean Island you speak so fondly of has a history of violence and bloodshed. Why, Castro and Guevara killed thousands during their revolution, and Castro stood thousands more in front of walls and executed ‘em. How many have died there in Guantanamo? Castro famously declared Cuba a ’socialist nation’ in 1960, seized economic control by nationalizing industry, redistributing property, collectivizing agriculture and creating policies that would benefit the ‘poor’ (hey, that sounds a lot like…are you sure Obama isn’t more like Fidel Castro than Abraham Lincoln or John Kennedy?)
    There’s nothing wrong with that artwork as painted on that shack. The problem I see, Cosmic Debris, is with your mental left-leaning pro-socialism and (yes, I’ll say it) Anti-American attitude.

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