Mark Peterson: White Noise

In White Noise Mark Peterson examines the rhetoric of the White House on immigration and Muslim bans, and how this echoes and intersects with nationalism, Western chauvinism, white supremacy, neo-Nazis, and all those calling for an ethnostate in America. Peterson began his project as a means to understand the divisive mood of the country following the 2016 presidential election. His often confronting subjects include anti-Muslim rallies in New York; families on Confederate Memorial Day in the South; white nationalists protesting in Charlottesville, preceding the murder of Heather Heyer; leaders of the Ku Klux Klan in their homes; burning swastikas. The result is a vital and unsettling portrait of the normalization of this reality in the United States; in Claudia Rankine’s words: What our government won’t acknowledge Mark Peterson has. His images focus on the terror that has taken advantage of our refusal to look it squarely in its face and acknowledge it as homegrown and thriving.

Always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. - Elie Wiesel