Secrets: Iraq - JoAnn Verburg

The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA Highlights since 1980, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, p. 123

This ordinary still life, featuring a cup of coffee and the New York Times newspaper, has been photographed in an unusual way. What might have been a benign, placid picture, reassuring to our sense of the tranquility of domestic life, has been fractured. The photographer has joined two views of the same scene into a diptych that is disorienting even though the space is continuous from one frame to the other. This work is a kind of puzzle that tests viewers' perceptions while drawing them in through the exquisite use of light and a radiant color palette.

A close look reveals the figure of a uniformed soldier on the left side of the first picture and palm trees above him. In the newspaper text, "troops and why it had not . . . the troops earlier?" is readable. In the righthand picture marching soldiers are visible through the glass coffee cup, and part of the word "Baghdad" can be read in the newspaper. This scene of ordinary domestic life has been invaded by the dramatic troubles of a distant war.

Audio Program excerpt Present Tense: Photographs by JoAnn Verburg, July 15–November 5, 2007

Artist, JoAnn Verburg: This photograph which is calledSecrets: Iraq was taken in the morning, and light was pouring in to the room where I was reading the paper, and having a little espresso in a glass cup and that moment, when you're sort of half asleep and getting ready for your day. I think is just such a beautiful time in many ways.

The photograph reflects that just by the choice of subject matter, that there is the newspaper and everything that's recorded in that paper in combination with that sensual experience of the beautiful light as well as the sense of the smell of the coffee and the taste of the coffee.

What you're looking at is a little glass cup of espresso, and through the bottom you can see some soldiers. They're women soldiers in Kuwait. This piece has to do with the coming together of beauty and one's consciousness as a citizen, as a political being, and that they're not two different things.