News from New York State Division of Military & Naval Affairs

For more information contact: Michael Aikey or Colleen Maheux, 518-581-5100

'Ghosts in the Landscape' Photography Exhibit Revisits Vietnam War

Program with Artist and book signing at the NYS Military Museum

LATHAM, NY (10/18/2007; 0931)(readMedia)-- The New York State Military Museum and Veterans Research Center will host a program with nationally acclaimed photographer Craig Barber Saturday, October 20 at 12:30 in the museum at 61 Lake Avenue, Saratoga Springs, New York.

Mr. Barber will present a program based on the exhibit of his photographs, Ghosts in the Landscape, currently running at the museum. Copies of his book, Ghosts in the Landscape: Vietnam Revisited will be available for him to sign.

After serving in Vietnam as a U.S. Marine, photographer Craig Barber returns twenty-eight years later to a country he first saw through the eyes of combat. Haunted by the deaths he witnessed, Barber carries his memories of being eighteen with a taunting bulls-eye painted on his helmet, the smell of smoldering bombs, and the cries of the dying back to Vietnam in order to put his ghosts to rest.

In the Vietnamese countryside, he captures the healing landscapes of bomb craters turned into fish-rearing ponds and shell casings functioning as fence posts with a handmade cardboard pinhole camera. Through platinum processing, Barber brings these ethereal images to us in ghosts in the landscape. In a country where half its population is under twenty and has no memory of war, Barber’s photographs give hope that healing and change are on the horizon.

Craig J. Barber, known for his provocative landscape photographs and recognized as one of today’s premier platinum printers, is exhibited in more than 60 solo exhibitions and represented in numerous public and private collections including the George Eastman House in Rochester, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, Chrysler Museum in Norfolk, Museum of New Mexico Sante Fe, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Portland Art Museum Portland, the Brooklyn Museum of Art in New York, and the Biblioteque Nationale de France in Paris.

Barber lives in New York’s Hudson Valley and teaches at photography workshops throughout the United States and Europe.

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