Nina Berman
The photography of Nina Berman focuses on the contemporary stories of her homeland, but her images are the antithesis of glory and the American dream. Indeed, Keith Wilson discovers that in a year of fear and violence, Nina doesn’t like what she’s seeing…
It is a Tuesday morning in New York when I call Nina Berman for the interview that we’d arranged two weeks earlier. Little did we realize that in the ensuing days between reaching out to fix a date and talking face-to-face via Skype, the whole political landscape of America would change. In that time, 46-year-old George Floyd was arrested by Minneapolis Police for allegedly using a counterfeit $20 bank note. Pinned face down to the street with a policeman’s knee to his neck, Floyd died in a matter of minutes. Led by the Black Lives Matter movement, protests against police brutality towards African Americans soon erupted across America, culminating in violent clashes with police, looting and even more deaths.
Then, the day before Nina and I are due to speak, US President Donald Trump poses outside St John’s Church in Washington DC, holding aloft a bible for the cameras. Moments before Trump’s televised walk to the church, protestors were forcefully cleared from Lafayette
Park by police using batons and tear gas. Far from quelling the protests, the President’s actions are followed by further expressions of outrage, violence and street demonstrations in multiple American cities. That night, stores are looted and cars torched. It’s been the biggest week of civil unrest since the ’60s and I ask Nina, a lifelong resident of New York, if she’s seen anything like this:
“No, I think I would describe it as an attempted coup.”
It’s an answer I wasn’t expecting…
Really?
Yeah, by Trump, absolutely. I think we’re seeing two things… On the one hand, as a result of the (Covid-19) pandemic and the impossible economic system for most young people in the US, we’re seeing intense frustration built up over decades and an increasingly militarized police, who on a daily basis are humiliating and brutal; and on the other hand you have Trump, whose agenda is to create an autocratic United States and to dismantle our democratic institutions. He may not have largely articulated it… and I think he welcomes this violence and will run on the violence for his re-election campaign. He’s been looking for something to run on, but even if he loses at the polls in November, I don’t think anyone in the country truly believes that he will leave peacefully.
From your perspective, as someone who has photographed conflict for decades, are there parallels with what you’re seeing on your own doorstep?
I’ve photographed 10, 15 actions after police murders, but this one is different. Much more numbers, more rage
Well, I don’t see myself as a war zone or conflict photographer. I see myself as someone who has spent her career, for the most part, studying the United States, and so I’m not surprised. I likely have a different perspective to war photographers who routinely see this.
As someone who was born in New York City and has spent most of my life here, I haven’t seen destruction of property like this since 1977, during the New York blackout. I also feel the pandemic has fuelled some of the frustration. It’s dangerous out there still, because of the pandemic. I will not photograph looters; I will not go looking for looters, I don’t see that as the story – of course this will be the main media focus.