Online lecture July 23: Nina Berman on work made in 1987 when she traveled with a group of American Vietnam War veterans on their return trip to Vietnam

Via Pemumbra Foundation

July 21, 2025

Penumbra is excited to host a series of online public lectures in July 2025, where artists will share insight into the projects being digitized through this program.

On Wednesday, July 23, Nina Berman will discuss work made in 1987 when as a young photographer and journalist she traveled with a group of American Vietnam War veterans on their return trip to Vietnam. The experience had a significant impact on her and influenced her later work more generally on the costs of war and American warmaking.



July 23, 7-8PM | RSVP here

Nina Berman is a documentary photographer, filmmaker, journalist and educator.  Her work explores American politics, militarization, environmental issues and post violence trauma.  She is the author of Purple Hearts – Back from Iraq, (Trolley, 2004) portraits and interviews with wounded American veterans, Homeland, (Trolley, 2008) an examination of the militarization of American life post September 11, and An autobiography of Miss Wish (Kehrer, 2017) a story told with a survivor of sexual violence which was shortlisted for both the Aperture and Arles book prizes. Additional fellowships, awards and grants include: the Gugggenheim Fellowship in Photography, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the World Press Photo Foundation, Pictures of the Year International, the Open Society Foundation, the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, the MIT Knight Science Journalism Fellowship and the Aftermath Project. Her work has been exhibited at more than 100 international venues from the Whitney Museum Biennial to the concrete security walls at the Za'atari refugee camp in Jordan. Public collections include the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Museum of the City of New York, the Harvard Art Museums and the Bibliothèque nationale de France among others. She has participated in workshops around the world for young photographers and is a professor at Columbia Journalism School where she directs the photojournalism/documentary photography program.

Podcast - Nina Berman: A Lens on Consequence

Via Foto

 Foto 026 - Nina Berman by Michael Howard

 

 In this episode, Michael talks with Nina Berman, a documentary photographer, filmmaker, and professor whose work interrogates the relationship between power, militarization, and the American experience. Over a career spanning three decades, Nina has consistently focused her lens on systems of violence and their aftermath, from war zones to police training grounds to the staged patriotism of political spectacle.

A Guggenheim Fellow, two-time World Press Photo winner, and professor at Columbia Journalism School, Nina is also the author of three major books: Purple Hearts – Back from Iraq, Homeland, and An Autobiography of Miss Wish. Her photographs have been exhibited in venues such as the Whitney Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

In this conversation, she discusses how her work has evolved from portraits of wounded veterans to broader investigations into how militarized thinking permeates everyday American life. She reflects on the ethics of long-term documentary work, the emotional cost of sustained witnessing, and why photography remains a vital civic act.

This is a powerful episode with one of the most uncompromising voices in American documentary photography — a conversation about courage, clarity, and using your camera to look directly at the systems that define our time.

Stream "Underfire: The Untold Story of PFC Tony Vaccaro"

 

Santa Fe, NM – On December 20, 2021, Tony Vaccaro celebrates his 99th birthday, an inspiration to us all.

To help celebrate, we are offering limited free streaming downloads of the HBO documentary "Underfire: The Untold Story of PFC Tony Vaccaro". The film chronicles the life of a man who played two roles during World War II, both at great risk: a combat infantryman on the front lines and a photographer who took and developed roughly 8,000 photographs of the war. Contact Monroe Gallery for details, offer is limited.

Born in Greensburg, Pennsylvania on December 20, 1922, Tony is one of the few people alive who can claim to have survived the Battle of Normandy and COVID-19. Tony Vaccaro spent the first years of his life in the village of Bonefro, Italy after becoming an orphan; by age 10 he started taking pictures with a box camera. When World War II broke out he was ordered to return to the US, where he reunited with his sisters and joined his high school camera club. Drafted into the war, by June 1944, now a combat infantryman in the 83rd Infantry Division, he was on a boat heading toward Omaha Beach, six days after the first landings at Normandy. Denied access to the Signal Corps, Tony was determined to photograph the war, and had his portable 35mm Argus C-3 with him from the start. For the next 272 days he photographed his personal witness to the brutality of war.

Returning to the US, Tony started his career as a commercial photographer, eventually working for virtually every major publication: Look, Life, Harper’s Bazaar, Town and Country, Newsweek, and many more. Tony went on to become one the most sought after photographers of his day. By focusing on the splendor of life, Tony replaced the images of horror embedded in his eyes from war.

Monroe Gallery of Photography is honored to present a special exhibition celebrating the 99th birthday of this American hero and distinguished photographer. The exhibit of over 40 photographs spans Tony’s 80-year career and features several never-before-exhibited photographs. The exhibit continues on-line and in the Gallery through January 16, 2021.

"I take my responsibility as a photographer much more seriously"

My Most Important Photograph: Spc. Robert Acosta, 20, photographed at his home

 in Santa Ana, Calif., April 13, 2004

©Nina Berman-NOOR

 

Via TIME Lightbox

Best known for documenting the aftermath of the Iraq War and the militarization of American life, Nina Berman tells us about the most important photograph she's ever made.

"I thought I could add some complexity into the narrative by investigating what it meant to be wounded, who these troops were, what it meant to return home at such a young age and make the transition to disabled veteran."