Debi Cornwall

About Contact Installation Views Welcome to Camp America/2 Gitmo on Sale Events CV Welcome to Camp America/1 Gitmo at Home, Gitmo at Play Welcome to Camp America/3 Beyond Gitmo Welcome to Camp America/Exhibition Welcome to Camp America/Book

about

I am a conceptual documentary artist who returned to creative expression in 2014 after a 12-year career as a wrongful conviction lawyer. My values as an advocate and trained mediator, as well as my background representing innocent DNA exonerees, inform my visual work. My series marry empathy and dark humor with structural critique. While completing a Bachelor's degree in Modern Culture and Media at Brown University, I trained in photography at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). 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, I attended Harvard Law School and practiced for more than a decade as a civil rights attorney representing innocent DNA exonerees. In 2016, I was nominated for the Baum Award for an Emerging American Photographer and awarded Duke University's Archive of Documentary Arts Collection Award for Women Documentarians and the Punctum Award, the Lianzhou Foto Festival's jury prize. I am a Brown University Fitt Artist-in-Residence and 2017-19 Center for Emerging Visual Artists Fellow. The completed body of work from my long-term project on Guantánamo Bay, Welcome to Camp America, debuted in 2017 as an exhibition at the Centre de la Photographie Genève (Switzerland), and my forthcoming photo book with Radius Books was recently shortlisted for the 2017 Les Rencontres de la Photographie d'Arles Photo-Text Book Award. Subscribe to my mailing list here. If you would like to acquire a limited-edition print, exhibit my work, or invite me to speak or collaborate, please email me at debi@debicornwall.com. Follow me @debicornwall (IG/Twitter) and @debicornwallphoto (FB).