American photographer and former civil rights attorney Debi Cornwall’s second book project, Necessary Fictions (2020), investigates the fantasies and imaginaries used to sustain the U.S. commitment to forever war. Despite the official end of the U.S. war in Afghanistan, the reverberation of anti-Muslim war rhetoric and ongoing engagement of U.S. military and intelligence personnel in counterterrorism missions indicate that the forever war, and its necessary reckoning, continue. How does the U.S. military propel a war without end and without clear objectives? Cornwall examines U.S. military wargames to consider what training simulations indicate about the reality that empire imagines and aims to perpetuate. Through 105 photographs made at mock Arab villages set up at ten military training sites from 2016-2018, Cornwall looks at the imaginary worlds the military builds to prepare to vanquish real targets. In addition, by situating the photographs in the context of extensive documentation – including her own…

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