Showing posts with label Bedrooms of the Fallen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bedrooms of the Fallen. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 20, 2021

Not standing still: new approaches in documentary photography at the Monash Gallery of Art includes Ashley Gilbertson's photography

 

Via Monash Gallery of Art

On exhibit through May 16, 2021

Virtual tour here


PHOTO is a major new biennial international festival of photography that will activate Melbourne and sites across regional Victoria with the most inspiring photography from Australia and around the world.

MGA’s headlining Photo 2021 exhibition will explore the festival’s theme of ‘Truth’ through the lens of new documentary photography.

Not standing still: new approaches in documentary photography, will introduce Australian audiences to leading photographers from around the world who are making new documentary photography, many never having exhibited in Australia before. This exhibition will place Australian photographers alongside their international contemporaries; spanning 11 countries of origin, these are the photographers who are changing the way we think about photographic storytelling.

Truth is implicitly linked to photography because of its capacity to be a medium of record, but photographers have been using their tools to uncover and reimagine truths through investigative, imaginative and allusive photography.

New documentary photography is about rethinking the traditional ways of representing what the camera sees. Instead of straight documentation, these photographers have sought new ways to show pressing social and political issues, and in doing so are transforming photography itself.

Interior phot of bedroom of he bedroom of former Army Spc. Ryan Yurchison, 27, in Middletown, Ohio. Yurchison died of a suspected suicide drug overdose on May 22, 2010 after returning home from Iraq and struggling with PTSD

Ashley Gilbertson

 Marine Corporal Christopher G. Scherer, 21, was killed by a sniper on July 21, 2007 in Karmah, Iraq. He was from East Northport, New York. His bedroom was photographed in February 2009. 2009


Included in the exhibition are selections from Ashley Gilbertson's "Bedrooms of the Fallen" series.

In 2004, Australian photojournalist Ashley Gilbertson spent time documenting the Second Battle of Fallujah in Iraq. Images he made during this assignment won him the Robert Capa Gold Medal for ‘best photographic reporting from abroad requiring exceptional courage and enterprise’. During the trip, one of the young marines escorting him was killed. 

War photography is a complex phenomenon. It often relies on the bravura of a photographer to be in the ‘right place’ at the ‘right time’, capturing the action and the adrenaline on film to illustrate the drama of battle. To demonstrate the cost of this drama and to peel back its layers, Gilbertson has photographed bedrooms left behind by 40 soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. The soldiers represented come from America, Canada, England, France, Germany, Italy, and Scotland. Their rooms show us what remains of lives cut short, displaying what is not evident in pictures of the battlefield. The familiar and ordinary objects that pepper these images communicate some of the texture of a soldier’s life, which is preserved in these photographed spaces – like an altar or memorial – in a way that a picture of an explosion or even a coffin struggles to convey. 

This series also show us what families cling to, and how memory and remembrance work in the real world of contemporary conflict. Gilbertson’s photographs show an aspect of war that is often secondary to images of battle. In their quietness these images reach no crescendo or catharsis, and so force a shift in pace in both the making and viewing of war photography.


View more of Ashley Gilbertson's work here

Sunday, May 25, 2014

Bedrooms of the Fallen: Honoring the Casualties of War





BEDROOMS OF THE FALLEN

Over 5,000 men and women have died serving the United States in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. This is a project about who they were - sons, daughters, sisters, brothers - and the bedrooms which they once called their own.

About This Project

These bedrooms once belonged to men and women who died fighting in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. These fallen men and women were blown up by IEDs, RPGs, hand grenades and suicide bombers. They were shot down in ambushes and by snipers. They died in helicopters, in humvees, and in tanks. It all took place thousands of miles away from home, and the country they fought to defend.

The purpose of this project is to honor these fallen – not simply as soldiers, marines, airmen and seamen, but as sons, daughters, sisters and brothers – and to remind us that before they fought, they lived, and they slept, just like us, at home.

Bedrooms of the Fallen was conceived in 2007 as a way to memorialize soldiers and marines who died in Iraq. It was expanded to include casualties from Afghanistan in 2009. Order the book here.



Related: Time LightBox
Bedrooms of the Fallen: Honoring the Casualties of War

Thursday, December 20, 2012

A Photographer's War With PTSD



Marines run for cover after white phosphorus was accidentally fired at them by another company in Falluja, Iraq on November 9, 2004. [Ashley Gilbertson / VII]

Recomended read, via The Atlantic:

"As Ashley Gilbertson crept up the dark staircase of a minaret in Fallujah, he hovered closely behind advance troops of the United States Marines. Stepping around and over the rubble created by an earlier shelling of the mosque, Gilbertson could hardly see the two soldiers in lead.

Moments before starting their climb, Gilbertson argued to be the first person in the room. He wanted to take first shot at the insurgent who used this holy perch to prey on advancing U.S. forces. However, Lance Corporal William Miller and his partner, Lance Corporal Christian Dominguez, would not back down, and they took the lead that November afternoon. As Gilbertson took to the stairs, his partner Dexter Filkins mounted the steps behind him.

Guns at the ready, the convoy had just crested the first flight of crumbling stairs when gunfire erupted. Gilbertson was pushed backwards, tumbling down the steps. His face felt wet.

It was the blood of Lance Corporal Miller.

As the scene became chaotic, Gilbertson's immediate reaction was to shoot back.

He didn't.

He couldn't.

And it wouldn't matter.

The only weapon Gilbertson carries is a camera.

Full article here.


Sunday, November 11, 2012

Veteran's Day, 2012






Revealing Side Of Combat
There are sides of war we are not exposed to but a new photographic exhibit in River North is giving us a glimpse. CBS 2's Vince Gerasole reports: click for video
 
 
 
"People don't think this war has any impact on Americans? Well here it is," Nina Berman says of the image of a somber bride staring blankly, unsmiling at the camera, her war-ravaged groom alongside her, his head down.
 
 
 
Related: War/Photography
 
 
 
 
 

Sunday, May 27, 2012

MEMORIAL DAY 2012


©Eric Smith: Funeral for Iraq War Soldier, Lake Orion, Michigan,2006

A link for reflection on this Memorial Day:


BEDROOMS OF THE FALLEN

"These bedrooms once belonged to men and women who died fighting in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. These fallen men and women were blown up by IEDs, RPGs, hand grenades and suicide bombers. They were shot down in ambushes and by snipers. They died in helicopters, in humvees, and in tanks. It all took place thousands of miles away from home, and the country they fought to defend.

The purpose of this project is to honor these fallen – not simply as soldiers, marines, airmen and seamen, but as sons, daughters, sisters and brothers – and to remind us that before they fought, they lived, and they slept, just like us, at home." Click to view


See Also:

  "As Memorial Day Nears, a Single Image That Continues to Haunt"

                 Memorial Day at Arlington National Cemetery

                Monroe Gallery of Photography: Memorial Day, 2011
         
                                                                      Memorial Day, 2010