Craig Barber
Ghosts in the Landscape
Umbrage editions, 2006, 112 pages, 45 duotone photographs, 9-1/2”x 12”
After serving in Vietnam as a U.S. Marine, photographer Craig Barber returns twenty-eight years later to a country first seen in combat. Haunted by witnessed atrocities, Barber carries his memories of war back to Vietnam to quiet his ghosts. In the Vietnamese countryside, armed only with a handmade pinhole camera, he captures images of bomb craters turned into fish-rearing ponds, parts from airstrip runways used as window grates, and shell casings functioning as fence posts. In a country where half the population is under twenty and has no memory of war, Barber’s ethereal platinum prints give hope that healing and change is on the horizon.
