Debi Cornwall: Model Citizens

Debi Cornwall: Model Citizens considers the United States as a case study into a global phenomenon: How have staging, performance, and roleplay come to inform thinking about citizenship in a violent land whose people no longer agree on what is true? The last in a trilogy of books on the American condition, Model Citizens includes photographs from US Border Patrol Academy training scenarios, “Save America” rallies, and history museums. Jarringly juxtaposed images from these apparently unrelated sites illuminate systems that reconcile, justify, or distract from the harsh realities of life in a polarized, militarized society. The design accentuates slippages: images flow across French-fold page turns, just as Cornwall’s practice questions the role of documentary photography in an era of splintered realities.

The Model Citizens project was awarded the 2023 Prix Elysée, a biennial juried prize for mid-career photographers, sponsored by the Photo Elysée Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland. The award also includes a grant for a concurrent publication in both English and French (Citoyens Modèles, Éditions Textuel, 2024). Both editions were released to coincide with Les Rencontres d’Arles de la Photographie in July 2024.

Debi Cornwall is a multimedia documentary artist who returned to visual expression after a twelve-year career as a civil rights lawyer. While completing her BA in Modern Culture and Media at Brown University, she studied photography at RISD. She then received a JD from Harvard Law School and practiced as a wrongful conviction attorney, also training as amediator. Exhaustive research and negotiation were critical to her advocacy and remain integral to her visual practice. In addition to the Prix Elysée, Debi has been honored with accolades including a NYFA Fellowship in Photography, a NYSCA Individual Artist Grant in Film, an inaugural Leica Women Foto Project Award, and the Duke University Archive of Documentary Arts Collection Award. Her work has been profiled in publications such as Art in America, European Photography Magazine, British Journal of Photography, The New York Times Magazine, and Hyperallergic, and is held in public and private collections around the world. As an ICP faculty member, Cornwall teaches students how to plumb deeper layers in their work. Model Citizens is Cornwall’s third Radius book, after Necessary Fictions (Radius Books, 2020), and Welcome to Camp America, Inside Guantánamo Bay (Radius Books, 2017). She lives in Brooklyn, NY.