Radical Conversation: Making America Great—Brian Palmer: The Image of Greatness

Brian Palmer has an enormous worldview: he has been based in China and stationed in Afghanistan, and has traveled the globe with the White House press corps. In this segment, he shares how he sees today’s American political moment within a global context. His current work on a documentary about historic racial inequalities in his home state of Virginia will also figure into the dialogue.

This program is the fourth and final installment of ICP’s series “Radical Conversation: Making America Great,” which explores the current political crisis and the nature of personal responsibility and action in this moment.

Speakers

Brian Palmer is a visual journalist and educator living in Richmond, VA. Before going freelance in 2002, he served in a number of staff positions: as photographer, assistant editor, and Beijing bureau chief (US News & World Report); writer (Fortune); and correspondent (CNN). His photos and articles have appeared in the New York Times and the Nation, and
on Web outlets, such as BuzzFeed, Color-Lines.com, and Narrative.ly. Full Disclosure, his documentary about embedding with US Marines in Iraq, was awarded a Ford Foundation grant. He is currently working with his wife, Erin Hollaway Palmer, on Make the Ground Talk, a documentary that evokes life in a historic black community that was uprooted during World War II to build a naval base, now a top-secret US military installation.

Accra Shepp (moderator) is a photo-based artist whose work has explored our relationship with the natural environment, such as in his 2014 solo exhibition at the Queens Museum that looked at the more than 40 islands that make up New York City. His work is in a number of important public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Art Institute of Chicago. His images of Occupy Wall Street have been exhibited all over the world, most recently in Sweden and Germany, and were excerpted in the book The Order of Things (Steidl, 2015). Shepp is the recipient of numerous awards and residencies, including a Fulbright Fellowship. He has taught at the International Center
of Photography, Princeton University, Sarah Lawrence College, and Columbia University.