© Nina Berman / NOOR. Passaic River, Lyndhurst, New Jersey, USA, November 18, 2016. The Joseph Carmine de Jessa Memorial Bridge over the Passaic River connects the towns of Lyndhurst and Nutley, New Jersey. The bridge is named after a 19 year old US Marine who died from a mortar attack while deployed as a rifleman in Quang Tri, Vietnam, 1967. The bridge spans a part of the river contaminated with dioxin from Vietnam War era Agent Orange production. During the 1960’s the Diamond Alkali Co. plant in Newark, NJ, produced Agent Orange for the US military and then dumped the surplus into the Passaic River where it settled into the riverbed stretching from Newark to Lyndhurst. The dioxin-contaminated the fish and contributes to the River’s designation as a superfund site. Clean up of the dioxin and other pollutants are estimated at well over $1 billion. The bridge is in a state of disrepair and slated for eventual replacement.
Click here to register for this FREE live lecture on August 20 @ 11AM EDT / 5 PM CEST.
The Aftermath Project Lecture Series
As the Aftermath Project opens the application cycle for its 2021 grant, VII Emeritus member Sara Terry—the founder and director of The Aftermath Project—will be hosting four online talks with Aftermath Project photographers. Grant winners Nina Berman, Glenna Gordon, and Andrew Lichtenstein, and finalist Jessica Hines will join Sara one-on-one to discuss their projects and share images from their work. Sara will also provide insights into what elements made the projects and proposals so compelling to the judges.
The talks will offer insights into the work of some of the most committed photographers in the industry, and into The Aftermath Project’s grant-making process. The application cycle for the 2021 Aftermath Project grant will open in early September. Sign up for the newsletter at The Aftermath Project’s website to receive news about the grant.
About Nina Berman
The Aftermath Project grantee Nina Berman is a documentary photographer, filmmaker, author and educator. Her wide-ranging work looks at American politics, militarism, environmental contamination and post violence trauma. Her photographs and videos have been exhibited at more than 100 venues from the security walls of the Za’atari refugee camp to the Whitney Museum of American Art. She is the author of Purple Hearts – Back from Iraq (2004), portraits and interviews with wounded American veterans, Homeland (2008), a look at the militarization in post-September 11 America, and most recently, An autobiography of Miss Wish (2017), a story told with a survivor of sexual violence which was shortlisted for both the Aperture and Arles book prizes. Additional fellowships, awards, and grants include the New York Foundation for the Arts, the World Press Photo Foundation, Pictures of the Year International, the Open Society Foundation, the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University and the Aftermath Project. She is a member of the photography and film collective NOOR images and is a professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism where she directs the photography program. She lives in her hometown of New York City.
