Camp X-Ray, US Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, 2009

"I think Sean should put in a media request to come down here to shoot Camp X-Ray"

With that simple line in an email exchange, the process was set in-motion and at the tail end of January, 2009 I was standing at the gate of one of the most infamous prisoner detention facilities. Though, to look at it now, you would hardly recognize it as such.

The land comprising the Guantanamo Bay naval base has been leased by the United States since 1903, reaffirmed by treaty in 1934. The land can only be returned to Cuba either by mutual agreement or if the US abandons the base. Though diplomatic relations have been cut since 1961, the US continues to submit a cheque for the lease value ($4,085 in 2008 $s); the cheque hasn't been cashed since Castro came into power.

Prior to its current notoriety surrounding War on Terror-related prisoners, the base received attention in the 1960s due to the Cuban Missile Crisis and subsequent tensions, in the 1990s related to the arrival of tens of thousands of refugees from Haiti, and it was also the fictional setting of the movie "A Few Good Men. Otherwise, the base has a somewhat sleepy reputation... good to work on your diving skills and your suntan.

With the influx of refugees in the 1990s, facilities were required to detain those who misbehaved. A temporary detention facility was constructed. The cells were simple chain link fencing with basic sun and rain protection. I don't know much about this period, other than this was the beginning of Camp X-Ray.

The United States and its allies launched the War in Afghanistan in late 2001. As with all wars, facilities are required to detain prisoners of war and others picked up on the battlefield. As I understand it, somewhere around Christmas, 2001, the decision was made to detain prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. While permanent prison facilities were being created at the base, the decision was also made to utilize Camp X-Ray in the interim. In less than 96 hours, Camp X-Ray was expanded to its present size. Those building the facility were given little notice, and were not told where they were going, or what they would be building when they got there. The expansion retained the same basic design element of the 1990s component: chain link wire enclosures on a concrete pad with overhead shade and canvas tarps to shelter from rain. The facility was expanded from 1 "cellblock" (as I would generally phrase it) to 7 cellblocks, each fenced from each other. In addition, Camp X-Ray now included group showers, sanitary facilities in each cell, numerous guard towers, a medical building, and a few additional small buildings for which I could not discern a purpose (I assume these were for guard breaks and such).

Lastly, the new Camp X-Ray also included 7 interrogation huts. Though the facility was enclosed by 2 rows of high fencing topped with barbed wire, razor wire and concertina wire, the interrogation huts were located "outside the wire." The facility was in use from January 2002 until April 2002, at which point the detainees were transferred to the newly constructed permanent prisons elsewhere on the base.

Though the facility was only in use for 4 months, many of the most infamous photographs of detainees were taken during this short period. Most memorable of which are the photos of detainees in orange jumpsuits with blacked out goggles and sound dampening earmuffs, kneeling in rows along a fence. It is not unheard of to see these images still in use today, though the facility has been closed for 7 years.

And so it was that 7 years later, I found myself in Ft. Lauderdale airport waiting for my Air Sunshine charter plane to take me to GTMO (the military spelling of "Gitmo"). 

Having never been on a military base before, I didn't really know what to expect. I wasn't expecting, however, for there to be a MacDonald's, a KFC, an elementary and high school... basically, it was like a small American town. Further giving this impression was the complete lack of Navy ships that I could see. It definitely helped me feel comfortable being there, which was a plus.

My 2 full days there generally followed the following routine: breakfast and lunch at the mess (surprisingly tasty), morning and afternoon sessions shooting Camp X-Ray, nap, driving tour of the base, dinner at one of the other restaurants. At the end of each day, before I offloaded any photos from my cards onto my laptop, I saw down with one of my escorts for "OpSec" (Operation Security). During this review, every photo I took was viewed and if any of them should happen to have caught a feature on the landscape (observation tower, water towers, security installations... even a junk yard), then the image had to be deleted. I knew what to avoid while I was shooting, and in the end 24 of about 700 photos had to go (which wasn't a big deal to me). I'm told this was lower than average. I only miss one of the shots... the top corner of a large panorama I shot.

The question most people ask me when they learn that I went to GTMO is "what did it feel like, being THERE?" To be honest, it didn't feel like anything unusual. I think this is in part due to the present day condition of Camp X-Ray. Due to an order from the Powers that Be, the facility is under protection from demolition, and so Mother Nature is reclaiming her land. I was not overwhelmed by any sense of dread or malice or anything else of the sort. As strange as it sounds, and I suppose callous, for me it felt like almost any other number of abandoned buildings or facilities I've been in over the years. Toronto's Old Don Jail felt much more oppressive than Camp X-Ray. This definitely surprised me. That isn't to say that the facility wasn't home to abuse or suffering or whatnot (there were several suicides here during the short time it was open), but being there in 2009 and seeing the facility in its then feral condition, the facility felt sterilized. Or at least neutralized. Definitely naturalized. Perhaps I just can't reconcile that what this place was, from that which it has become.

A word about my escorts: Over the course of my 2.5 days at GTMO, I was accompanied by 5 escorts (2 Army and 3 Navy) depending on the shift (2 at a time usually). They were all excellent, and really made me feel comfortable and as at home as I could have hoped to feel on a military base. Any question I had was answered, and vice versa ("you want to shoot this why exactly? But it is so run down!"). Many thanks.

Main Aisle

Cell Blocks

Cells

Guard Tower

Interrogation Huts

View from Guard Building

Wire and Cross

Wire, Fence and Vines