Reality Fragments

wrinkledorgan:

In the two series, Soldier/Many Wars, photographer Suzanne Opton photographs American soldiers close up, laying their heads before the camera, and American veterans who are draped. The subjects of the Soldier series are all young, active-duty soldiers from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and the photographs were presented as billboards in nine American cities from 2008 through 2010.

Reviewing them for The New Yorker, photography critic Vince Aletti wrote: “The posture is vulnerable and startling intimate, as if these young men and women were facing someone in bed or on a stretcher … Opton catches soldiers both on guard and off, looking out and inward simultaneously, and we can only imagine what they’re thinking, what they’ve done, and what they dread.”