Documentary photography by Nina Berman.
Bernstein Gallery, Princeton University.
Exhibition dates: October 25 – November 25, 2010

Panel Discussion with the artist: November 16, 2010 from 4:30 to 6 p.m., Bowl 16, Robertson Hall, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs,
Princeton University, Princeton, NJ.
Public reception to follow panel discussion at 6 p.m. in the Bernstein Gallery adjacent to Bowl 16.

Contact: Kate Somers
Ph: 609.497.2441

"Purple Hearts" is a series of portraits and interviews of wounded American soldiers who have returned from the Iraq war. Each portrait is accompanied by facts related to the injury, and a quote taken during an interview conducted by the photographer, Nina Berman. The photographs and interviews were taken across the country in the homes and backyards of soldiers, military hospitals and army bases.

The seven portraits on exhibit in the Bernstein Gallery document not only the physical disability. Equally disturbing for the viewer is being confronted with the palpable psychological injuries that each soldier has sustained. Quoting Berman: "I encounter them at a particularly unsettling moment of separation and transformation from able bodied warrior dedicated to a military livelihood to disabled veteran with no clear future."

Nina Berman is a documentary photographer with a primary interest in the American political and social landscape. Born in New York City, she grew up in the suburbs of New Jersey, and received a Bachelors Degree from the University of Chicago in 1982 and a Masters from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1985. Her work has appeared in publications including National Geographic, Harper’s, Rolling Stone, Time, the New York Times Magazine, and the London Sunday Times. Berman has received awards in art from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the World Press Photo Foundation and the Open Society Institute Documentary Fund, among others. In 2010, she was an artist in residence at the Whitney Museum of American Art and exhibited at the museum's 2010 Biennial. She is the author of two monographs, Purple Hearts – Back from Iraq and Homeland, both examining war and militarism. She is a member of the NOOR photo collective based in Amsterdam.