Cover of Defense Language by Claire Beckett, published in November 2025 by GOST Books

War is often understood through images of conflict, yet some of its most revealing photographs are made long before combat begins. Claire Beckett‘s project and book, Defense Language, published by GOST Books,  turns its attention to the carefully constructed worlds where soldiers rehearse for war—fictional villages populated by role-players, movie-like sets, and scripted encounters designed to simulate life in Iraq and Afghanistan. Suspended somewhere between theater, military strategy, and cultural performance, these spaces reveal as much about American perceptions as they do about the places they seek to represent.

Over nearly two decades, the artist embedded on military bases across the United States to examine how Arabs and Muslims were portrayed during pre-deployment training. By pairing photographs with military training manuals and language guides, the project exposes the assumptions, stereotypes, and institutional narratives embedded within these exercises. Rather than documenting war itself, Defense Language asks us to consider how images, language, and performance shape cultural understanding and how those constructions continue to influence the ways we see one another.

A conversation with the artists follows.

Cover of Defense Language by Claire Beckett, published in November 2025 by GOST Books

Defense Language Project Statement

The photographs in Defense Language show costumed role-players, elaborate Hollywood-inspired sets and staged tableaus on military bases across the United States. I embedded myself on these bases between 2006 and 2023 to explore the depiction of Arabs and Muslims during training for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

With this project, I look at the way Americans such as myself interact with other cultures. The photographs draw attention to the problematic depiction of “cultural others” in these trainings, challenging the implicit assumption of American cultural superiority.

Those portrayed in the photographs include military personnel—often combat veterans playing the role of enemy combatants—immigrants from Iraq or Afghanistan intended to make the training look and feel realistic, and local American civilians hired to populate the artificial villages. The photographs include a combination of formal portraits, landscapes depicting makeshift constructed buildings, and more informal images of the figures interacting within the training scenarios. The photographs were made at Fort Drum, New York; Fort Irwin, California; Fort Jackson, South Carolina; Fort Polk, Louisiana; The Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center (Twentynine Palms), California; and The Marine Corps Mountain Warfare Training Center, California.

Printed materials such as fold-out pocket guides used by American soldiers and Marines deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, and language training workbooks for Americans with ties to the military, are combined with the photographs. These materials were created either by the US military, related branches of the government or military contractors. I purchased most of this literature on eBay by searching for keywords related to American military involvement in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Although many of the materials are contemporary to the time of the project, some are historic and date back to the 1960s and 1970s, revealing the longstanding nature of American biases relating to Arab and Muslim people.

Gold Domed Mosque from Defense Language by Claire Beckett, published in November 2025 by GOST Books

Mahdi Army from Defense Language by Claire Beckett, published in November 2025 by GOST Books

Born 1978, Chicago, IL

Lives and works in Boston, MA

Claire Beckett is a photographer whose work offers a critical lens on American identity. Recent projects look at cultural appropriation within American military training and the experience of converts to Islam, interrogating how Americans, as a nation, grapple with identity, whiteness, and orientalism.

Solo exhibitions include the Wadsworth Atheneum, Carroll and Sons Gallery, and Journée Photographiques de Bienne; group shows include the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Mass MoCA, the National Portrait Gallery, and Aperture Foundation. Beckett has been awarded an Artadia Award and was artist-in-residence at Light Work. Her work has been featured in Artforum, American Art,  The Guardian, The New York Times, Public Culture, and The Boston Globe, among others.

Collections include the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Nelson-Atkins Museum, Fidelity Investments and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A monograph of her work, Defense Language, was recently published by GOST Books.

Claire Beckett earned a BA in Anthropology from Kenyon College. She then worked as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Republic of Benin before earning an MFA in Photography at Mass Art.

Instagram: @claire.beckett

Untitled spread (Pashtu language training workbook) from Defense Language by Claire Beckett, published in November 2025 by GOST Books

Pushtu Book from Defense Language by Claire Beckett, published in November 2025 by GOST Books

Tell us about your growing up and what brought you to photography?

Growing up, I was a creative kid. In high school, I especially liked collage-making and pottery. After my sophomore year of high school, my beloved ceramics teacher, Lou Ann, retired, and I didn’t want to study pottery with the new teacher. On a whim, I decided to try photography instead. I remember thinking that I would probably not like it. But after just a couple of weeks in the photography class, it clicked, and I was obsessed with making photographs, developing film and printing in the darkroom. From that point on, I’ve always made pictures. As a teen, I loved photography because it gave me a voice and a way to make people listen to what I had to say.

In retrospect, that desire to have a voice and to get other people to listen has consistently driven my creative practice, from my teen years to the present.

Civilian Howeida Abdelrahman playing the role of an Iraqi civilian, 2007 from Defense Language by Claire Beckett, published in November 2025 by GOST Books

What first led you to investigate military training environments rather than the wars themselves?

I first began by looking at the wars themselves, through an earlier project called In Training (2004-2007), in which I made portraits of young soldiers in Basic Training. The premise of the project was to focus on the youngest soldiers, many of whom still looked like children, as a way of asking the American public about the morality of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Why were we sending these young people to war?

It was only after making this work for some time that, while out photographing young soldiers, I stumbled upon a training exercise in which participants were wearing faux- Arab clothing. What I saw could only be described as a strange mash-up of gender, culture and militarism. Female soldiers were pretending to be female Arab civilians, but were wearing clothing and headscarves normally worn by Arab men, and despite pretending to be civilians, they were still carrying their Army-issued M-6 rifles.

As soon as I saw this scene, I knew I had found something deeply unsettling that I wanted to dig into. After I went home, I did some research and learned that I had witnessed a small piece of a military-wide mandate to simulate the cultural, political and social dimensions of life in Iraq and Afghanistan as part of training for the wars.

Privates Kendra Duffy, Allison Bronner and Jessica-Ann Layug, playing the role of Iraqi civilians during Basic Training, 2006, from Defense Language by Claire Beckett, published in November 2025 by GOST Books

The simulated villages feel both cinematic and a bit unsettling. What was your first impression when you encountered these constructed worlds?

My first impression was that I was witnessing a really strange mash-up of culture and language. It was clear to me that what I was seeing in these pretend villages was derived from pop culture, the TV and film industry, and our collective American imagination, more than from anything authentically Iraqi or Afghan.

Prior to getting my MFA in photography, I had studied anthropology as an undergraduate and then served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Benin, West Africa. Through these experiences, I learned a lot about how to engage with other cultures with curiosity and respect. In particular, my Peace Corps training included a 3-month immersion in a Beninese village, where I was taught in great detail how to appropriately integrate into the local culture.

I found it astonishing that the same government that could send me to Benin with such a detailed understanding of the host culture was simultaneously sending soldiers to war, rigorously prepared militarily yet with very limited cultural, political, and linguistic understanding. For me, the act of building the pretend villages and staging simulations in them revealed just how out of our depth Americans were in terms of understanding Iraq and Afghanistan.

Above Medina Jabal, 2009 from Defense Language by Claire Beckett, published in November 2025 by GOST Books

You worked on this project over nearly twenty years. How did the training environments—and your own perspective—change during that time?

The training environments waxed and waned. At first they were very simple, made of plywood sheds without much ornamentation. Eventually they became fancy, with many costumed role-players, multi-story buildings with complex facades, palm trees and even real goats and donkeys. Toward the end, the animals were gone, the palm trees had died, and the simulations became more like purely tactical exercises with few role-players and costumes.

Over time, my perspective changed as I gained a better understanding of the military and the real-world tactical and political issues in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. More significantly, in 2012 I began simultaneously working on a different project, The Converts, about Americans who have chosen to become Muslim. Through my research and photography with American Muslims, I learned a great deal about Islam and the cultures of North Africa, the Middle East, and Central and South Asia. This new information was a great help as I interpreted the training environments. It allowed me to understand the differences between elements stemming from Islam and those originating in Iraqi or Afghan culture, for example, and to discern what was an authentic cultural element versus a Hollywood-inspired one.

Lead insurgent Sargent Ariel Combs, 2017 from Defense Language by Claire Beckett, published in November 2025 by GOST Books

Many of the people in your photographs are themselves performing identities. How did you navigate photographing individuals who were playing roles rather than portraying themselves?

For this project, I would say that everyone is performing an identity of some sort, whether they are a civilian role-player pretending to be an Afghan villager, or a soldier pretending to be a member of Al-Qaeda. When making the portraits, I was always interested in what could be seen in the photograph that was stemming from the person themself, versus the performance of the character, versus the person’s thoughts about their character. It’s a complicated mix. When photographing, I would chat with the people about their character and about their experience of the character just to see what would shake loose in the portrait. And by that I don’t mean that I was in search of any “truth” one way or the other, just that all those elements together could produce productive friction that often resulted in an interesting photograph.

Aftermath of an IED, 2007 from Defense Language by Claire Beckett, published in November 2025 by GOST Books

Your project examines the depiction of Arabs and Muslims through military training. What did you learn about how stereotypes become formed?

Ultimately, I understood that the training environments could tell us a lot about ourselves as Americans. To me, it’s about how we understand our place in the world and how we relate to other cultures. I don’t believe that the trainings produced the stereotypes as much as they reflected the biases that we carry around with us.

Joint Command Center, 2009 from Defense Language by Claire Beckett, published in November 2025 by GOST Books

How did you arrive at the title of the book? And how did the book come about?

The title, Defense Language, stems from a branch of the American government, the Defense Language Institute, which trains American government and military personnel about the languages and cultures of other countries. When creating the book, I consulted many language and training guides produced by the military, the Defense Language Institute and others about the cultures and languages of Iraq and Afghanistan. Some of those materials are reproduced in the book.

Beyond this obvious reference, I was also interested in asking broader questions about the Global War on Terror, such as who is being defended, and what from. So much of the language surrounding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan circles back to the concept of defending the American homeland. But is that what the wars were really about?

The book took many years to come together, from my early drafts of a book dummy to the final version created in partnership with the book designer at GOST, Stuart Smith. Stu and I worked closely over several months to achieve the final design. I came to the process with a clear sense of the basic parameters of what I wanted to include in the book in terms of both photographs and ephemeral materials. Stu came up with the concept for the book design, alternating “chapters” of photographs with “chapters” of ephemera. Once the concept was in place, we worked over each section, trading PDFs back and forth and chatting over Zoom, until we were both happy with the final form.

Marines Sergeant John Sexon, Lance Corporal Cameron Stark and Lance Corporal Joshua Stevens role playing as Taliban fighters, 2009 from Defense Language by Claire Beckett, published in November 2025 by GOST Books

How did the military respond to your presence as a photographer, and did that relationship evolve over the years?

Generally, the military was a reasonable and helpful organization throughout the duration of the project. For the most part, they had a spirit of helpful collaboration. As a working artist, I was somewhat of a novelty for the Public Affairs Officers who hosted me on military bases. More typically, they work with journalists. Being an artist was helpful because they thought of me as an “embedded artist,” which is really different from being a journalist and held none of the baggage that exists between the media and the military.

And I’ll add, because people often ask, my work was not subject to censorship, nor was I required to turn in my photographs for military approval.

Of course, it’s not all roses. There are things I would still like to photograph to this day that I have not gotten access to.

Army Specialist Gary McCorkle playing the role of “Jibril Ihsan Hamal,” member of the Sunni Islamist militant organization Islamic Army of Iraq, 2009 from Defense Language by Claire Beckett, published in November 2025 by GOST Books

Looking back, what do you hope reader will reconsider after spending time with Defense Language?

For my American readers especially, I would like us all to take a look at ourselves and the cultural, racial and religious biases that we carry with us. As Americans, we can be proud of many amazing things about our country, but we are not better than anyone else. Collectively, we can do better.

Near Tiefort City, 2017 from Defense Language by Claire Beckett, published in November 2025 by GOST Books

Shi’a Mosque, 2008 from Defense Language by Claire Beckett, published in November 2025 by GOST Books

Army Specialist Gary Louis Sims playing the role of “Safah Mehdi Faris,” member of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, 2009 from Defense Language by Claire Beckett, published in November 2025 by GOST Books

Marine Lance Corporal Joshua Stevens playing the role of a Taliban fighter, 2009 from Defense Language by Claire Beckett, published in November 2025 by GOST Books

Marine Major John Cowait playing the role of a warlord holding a Taliban training camp on a remote Afghan mountaintop, 2009 from Defense Language by Claire Beckett, published in November 2025 by GOST Books

How to order the book:

Published November 2025 by GOST Books

11 x 9 inches

Hardback, 192pp, 136 images

ISBN 978-1-915423-98-6

https://www.clairebeckett.com/defense-language

https://gostbooks.com/en-us/products/defense-language

GOST Books

https://gostbooks.com/

@gost_books