We are pleased to announce that our core photographer Eugene Richards had recently published (September 2010) his War Is Personal book.
The book was published by Many Voices Press and the book's ISBN-10: 0292704410 or ISBN-13: 978-0292704411.
War Is Personal is a book comprised of fifteen photographic and textual essays that focus on the physical and emotional costs of the war in Iraq. For Eugene Richards, this intimate journey with returned American soldiers and their loved ones began in 2006.
Project History
It was early 2006 and the war in Iraq was entering its fourth year. No WMDs had been found, there were reports of sanctioned torture, of tens of thousands of injured and dead Iraqis, of more than 2,000 dead American soldiers, of a rising suicide rate among American military personnel, of scandals involving private contractors, of deteriorating conditions inside US military hospitals. All the while Congress and the media debated what the conflict was costing America in image, what the war was costing the president in his popularity ratings, what the war was costing America in “treasure.” And what had I, a veteran photojournalist, done? After being turned down for magazine assignments to Iraq, I’d written a couple of letters, signed some petitions, and somewhat hypocritically, grew disapproving of other people’s silence.
The truck he was riding in was unarmored and so crammed full of soldiers—twenty-five men in a space meant for eighteen—that he couldn’t even point his weapon outside. Bullets began flying everywhere, splintering metal, striking almost everyone, when all of a sudden his whole body went numb and he saw himself dropping his M-16 and being unable to pick it up. It took only a few seconds for him to realize that the thing that had just happened to him was something he would have to deal with for the rest of his life. He tried screaming for someone to kill him, but all that came out was a tiny whisper. —from an essay on Tomas Young, age 26, Kansas City, Missouri
Needing to become involved, I traveled out to Kansas City, Missouri and spent a couple of hours interviewing and photographing Tomas Young, who had been shot in the spine and paralyzed four days into his tour in Iraq. I was unaware at first that Tomas had accidentally overdosed on his meds that morning. As he attempted to speak with me, he slammed his fragile body forward and back in his wheelchair, then began dropping his lit cigarettes into his lap. After returning home, I telephoned Tomas, concerned that my pictures of him showed him at perhaps his frailest and most vulnerable. As I began to apologize he interrupted me. “The real problem,’’ he said, “ is that people in America want to see everything turn out okay, see vets who have been badly wounded get out of their beds, strap on their prostheses and run on the beach. This happens, to be sure, but not often. What you showed was the truth.” Moved and inspired by what Tomas had said, I continued working, whenever possible, on what would become a series of experiential and deeply personal photo essays that speak of the lives of some of the many thousands of people in the U.S. who’ve been profoundly affected by the war. I photographed and interviewed Carlos Arredondo from Roslindale, Massachusetts, who, upon learning that his Marine son had been killed in action, had a very public and self-destructive mental breakdown. I traveled to see Mona Parsons of Mount Vernon, Ohio, who, along with her daughter, spent days trying to convince her son, who was home on leave, not to return to his Army unit in Iraq.
Jeremy was sitting alone at the kitchen table, his thoughts somewhere else, when the women in his life began to encircle him. His wife, Maricar, sat down across from him, her arms wrapped tightly around herself, his mother, Mona, much closer, but looking down. Sayward was standing directly behind her brother when she started in. She shouted for Mona and Maricar to get the rope and the dark clothes. “I’ve got the iron skillet to whack him with,” she said.
When Jeremy pretended he hadn’t heard a word, Sayward snapped, “Do you hear me, it’s up to you what we do. If it was my husband going back to Iraq, I’d divorce him. I’d shoot him in the knee.” Wiping at her eyes, she reminded him that it was just a short drive to Canada. “No joking, what other options do we have? I will willingly go to prison if you don’t go back.” —from an essay on Mona Parsons, age 52, Mount Vernon, Ohio.
In the months that followed, I attended a funeral service in Maryland for twenty-two-year-old Army Sergeant Princess Samuels; spent close to a week in a VA Hospital in Roxbury, Massachusetts, documenting a woman’s struggle to keep her brain-injured son alive; interviewed and photographed a former combat medic who, upon returning home to Brooklyn, had to deal with his escalating PTSD; traveled to a small town in Minnesota to do a story on a single mom whose guilt-ridden Marine boyfriend had taken his life; visited a soldier who, after serving a few months in Iraq, fled to Toronto, Canada with her husband and children and now lives in fear of deportation.
The mourners moved down the aisle toward the coffin in a line that from the back of the church. They shuffled ahead in ones or twos, hushed, no one speaking more than a few words to those in front or behind them. They looked to be dazed, afraid, grief-stricken, bewildered, as if the terrible thing that had happened couldn’t have happened. Or else they showed no emotion, as if they had already been through enough. A few people paused to touch Princess’s hand or shoulder or say a prayer. An elderly man, who was close to tears, walked away, shaking his head. “What a waste,” he said. A woman bent forward to kiss Princess good-bye. —from an essay on Sgt. Princess C. Samuels, age 22, Mitchellville, Maryland.
The work kept evolving. After I’d completed ten stories—enough perhaps for a small book and more than enough for a series of magazine pieces (if magazines were interested) I grew concerned that the people I’d focused upon might seem too extraordinary to readers, although their stories were in fact not at all unusual in a time of war. That’s why after visiting with Nelida Bagley, who spends nearly every waking moment at the bedside of her grievously brain-damaged son, Jose, I traveled to Cleveland to the home of Gail Ulerie, whose day-to-day life is focused as well on caring for her brain-damaged son, Shurvon.
In this way, the fifteen stories were completed.
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