Gitmo at Home, Gitmo at Play

This photo essay is excerpted from Gitmo at Home, Gitmo at Play, an investigation of daily life for both prisoners and guards at the U.S. Naval Station in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where nobody has chosen to live, and where photographs of faces are forbidden by military regulation. Since the first “War on Terror” prisons opened on January 11, 2002, 780 men have been held at “Gitmo,” the vast majority without charge or trial of any kind. As of autumn 2016, most have been cleared and released: 61 men remain held, including 33 cleared for transfer, 10 convicted in military commissions, and 28 designated as “forever prisoners,” destined to remain held indefinitely. Gitmo at Home, Gitmo at Play is one chapter in a larger body of work investigating the peculiarly American normalization of offshore extrajudicial detention.