Debi Cornwall

Debi Cornwall studied photography at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) while completing a degree in Modern Culture and Media at Brown University. After working for photographers Mary Ellen Mark and Sylvia Plachy, as an AP stringer, and as an investigator for the federal public defender’s office, she attended Harvard Law School and practised for more than a decade as an attorney representing wrongly convicted DNA exonerees. Exhaustive research and negotiation were

Smoke Break, Camp America (2014)

Marrying dark humor with structural critique, Debi uses still and moving images along with testimony and archival material to examine the staging and performance of American power. Debi’s project, Welcome to Camp America: Inside Guantánamo Bay, is internationally acclaimed. As an installation, the project won juried exhibition prizes, the Lianzhou (China) Foto Festival Punctum Award and Fotofest Charles Jing Fellowship. The photography book (Radius, 2017), was named among the year’s top ten in the New York Times Magazine, among many other publications. WCA was also a PDN Annual Publisher’s Choice Award winner; shortlisted for the Paris Photo-Aperture First PhotoBook Prize, les Rencontres de la Photographie d’Arles Photo-Text Book Award, and the Alice Award; longlisted for the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation Book Award; named as a Lucie First Photo Book Prize finalist; and nominated for an ICP Infinity Award.

Debi’s second book, Necessary Fictions (Radius Books, 2020), was shortlisted for the Photo-Text Award at les Rencontres de la Photographie d’Arles (France), and named on multiple year-end top-ten lists.

Recent honors include a NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship in Photography, a Speranza Foundation Lincoln City Fellowship, a Leica Women Foto Project Award, a Harpo Foundation Visual Artist Grant, a Center for Emerging Visual Artists Fellowship, and a Duke University Archive of Documentary Arts Collection Award for Women Documentarians; shortlists for the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund Grant and Tim Hetherington Trust Visionary Award; and nominations for the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize and Baum Award for an Emerging American Photographer.

Prayer Rug with Arrow to Mecca, Camp Echo (2015)

Art in America, the British Journal of Photography, European Photography Magazine, and many other publications have profiled Debi’s practice. Her limited-edition prints are held in collections, including the Musée de la Photographie in Charleroi (Belgium), the Harvard Art Museums, and the Bibliotèque National de France.

Debi is based in Brooklyn, New York.

Film & Video:
Pineland/Hollywood (2021), 10m36s.
Jade Helm (2021), 14m51s.

Monographs:
Necessary Fictions (Radius Books, 2020)
Welcome to Camp America: Inside Guantánamo Bay (Radius Books, 2017)

Solo Exhibitions, Welcome to Camp America:
2021
Stadthaus Ulm (Germany)
Musée de la Photographie Charleroi (Belgium)

2018
les Rencontres de la Photographie en Gaspésie (Canada)
Cortona on the Move Festival (Italy)
Philadelphia Photo Arts Center (United States)
Head On Photo Festival (Sydney, Australia)

2017
Steven Kasher Gallery (NYC)
Carriage House Gallery, Brown University (Providence, RI)
BMW Photo Space of GoEun Museum of Photography (Busan, S. Korea)
Centre de la Photographie Genève (Switzerland)

2016
Lianzhou International Foto Festival (China) (catalog)

Recent Group Exhibitions:
2021
Photography is Dead. Long Live Photography!, Candela Gallery (Richmond, VA) (Juried exhibition, catalog)

2020
Leica Women Foto Award, Photoville (Brooklyn, NY)
False Memory, Rugby Gallery and Museum (Rugby, England)
Entrouvert (Half Open), Analix Forever Gallery (Geneva, Switzerland)
Leica Women Foto Project Award Exhibition, Leica Gallery (Boston, MA)

2018
Kraszna-Krausz Foundation Book Award Exhibition, Photo London (U.K.)
Discoveries of the Meeting Place, Fotofest Biennial (Houston, TX) (catalogue)
En Suspens (In Between), le BAL (Paris, France) (catalogue)

2017
Paris Photo-Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards Shortlist Exhibition, Paris Photo Fair, Grand Palais (France)
Hope, Beirut Art Fair (Lebanon), Annalix Forever Genève Contemporary Art Gallery
Bending the Frame, Gulf + Western Gallery, NYU Tisch School of the Arts (NY, NY)
Something Fierce, Lannan Foundation Gallery (Santa Fe, NM)
Aperture Summer Open: On Freedom, Aperture Gallery (NY, NY)
La Nuit de l’Année, les Rencontres de la Photographie (Arles, France)

Debi Cornwall

Debi Cornwall

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