Guantanamo: If the Light Goes Out

Guantanamo: If the Light Goes Out is Edmund Clark's three-year investigation into the naval base and prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, told through three interlocking environments: the American base community, the detention camp complex, and the homes of former detainees who were never charged with a crime.

Working within severe restrictions on what he could photograph, Clark deliberately chops and interweaves the three settings into a disjointed sequence, evoking the disorientation the camp was designed to produce. Rather than portraits, he photographs domestic interiors, drawing on the vanitas tradition of Dutch still-life painting, and the book includes texts by Julian Stallabrass and former detainee Omar Deghayes. Its title comes from a former detainee's statement: that when the light goes out unexpectedly in a room, he is back in his cell.

Clark is a British photographer known for long-form investigations into secrecy and incarceration, including Control Order House and The Mountains of Majeed. Guantanamo: If the Light Goes Out won Best Photographic Book at the 2011 New York Photo Awards and the Royal Photographic Society's Hood Medal.