Haunting Soldier Portraits Capture the Lasting Consequences of War

That’s what photography is all about, to me at least, ” says Snow. “Giving people a voice.”

And the right to Represent themselves,  I might add.  A right that Photographers usually deny their 'subjects'  in their 'documentation' of them - their 'Other'. 

Haunting Soldier Portraits Capture the Lasting Consequences of War

• BY DOUG BIEREND
• 10.14.13
• 6:30 AM

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• Second Lieutenant Adam Petzsch, 25. Edinburgh, before deployment: "I suppose I am a bit apprehensive, but I want to see what it is really like. It is what I joined the army for, but I don’t know what to expect."

Want to know how war affects the soldiers who fight it? Just look at their faces.

That’s the idea behind Lalage Snow’s gripping portraits series We Are The Not Dead. Presented as triptychs, they portray British soldiers at points before, during and after a seven month deployment to Afghanistan. Each individual portrait is accompanied by a quote, and taken together the words and photos are meant to provide a first-person window into what it means to fight a war.

“That’s what photography is all about, to me at least, ” says Snow. “Giving people a voice.”

She got the idea for the series during a three year period from early 2007 to late 2009, when she was embedded with coalition units in Afghanistan and Iraq as a freelance photographer. The embeds afforded her a close-up view of soldiers as they returned deeply affected from the experiences of war, often bearing profound psychological scars.

She first met the soldiers who appear in the portraits in 2010 while spending three months training with their unit as it prepared to be shipped to Afghanistan. She was then embedded with them off and on during their deployment.

“I got to know them personally as friends and understood what made them tick individually,” she says.

Second Lieutenant Adam Petzsch, 25.

Snow has purposely tried to maintained some editorial reserve, allowing the subjects’ subtle changes in expression over time to speak for themselves.

“I didn’t set out with an agenda, contrary to popular belief,” she says. “All I set out to do was give a voice to some of the guys on the ground.”

While the opening shot of each set portrays the soldiers in apparent states of ease, some of the portraits taken in the midst of war disclose a tension in the jaw, and an intense, focused gaze. At the end of the series, what were once bright, youthful eyes are sometimes slightly canted, and the soldiers’ gaze wanders despite the close proximity of a camera. All of them are open to interpretation.

“While I was actually shooting them sometimes I didn’t notice the changes in their faces at all. They were the just the same guys as before, to me, just more tired and a little thinner,” she says.

Even though she’s been careful to let the soldiers and photos speak for themselves, Snow has still been accused of having a political agenda and of deliberately altering the lighting to affect the look of the portraits.

“I did not use artificial lighting,” she says. “I never have. I don’t know how. Seriously, ask anyone. I’m a lighting muppet.”

The first and last photo in each triptych was taken at a barracks in Edinburgh, Scotland where the soldiers were only illuminated by a skylight. The mid-deployment images were taken in combat-addled regions of Afghanistan, including some at a conquered Taliban compound. She adds that seeing people she had befriended in peril made lighting a lower priority than it might have otherwise been.

“When one of your friends is going through a tough time and has seen something horrendous, been shot at or just delivered first aid to another soldier, but is still willing to be photographed and interviewed … sometimes light is the last thing you think about,” she says.

The quotes she gathered more directly address the changes the soldiers went through and are often more outwardly critical of the war. But those are their words, not hers.

“Through the interviews I saw a more nuanced and psychological difference across the board, and a strange sense of calmness,” she says.

Operating under the graces of the Ministry of Defense decision makers, Snow was hard-pressed to reliably plan her trips to the war zone, and so the series became a consistent challenge to pull off. She was often in the dark about exactly where she would be sent, and sometimes given less than a week’s notice to get ready.

“Once out there, I was at the mercy of flights, road moves, operations; as a civilian photographer, it’s only natural that your needs come last in the so called ‘theatre of battle,’” she says.

Snow says the the full title of the series, which is currently We Are the Not Dead: Returning by the Road We Came, occurred to her in 2010 while reading poetry on Remembrance Day in Kabul, a solemn occasion to reflect on the sacrifices made by soldiers in war. It’s the combination of the title of a Simon Armitage poetry collection and a line from Siegfried Sassoon’s poem To My Brother.

Taking the final photographs in each trilogy did not mean the end of Snow’s relationships with her subjects. She recently attended a wedding for one of the soldiers, and says that she keeps in regular touch with them through email and on social networks.

“When you spend that much time with people in an intense period of both your lives, you can’t just throw it away and move onto the next project without a care in the world,” she says.

All images: Lalage Snow

http://www.wired.com/rawfile/2013/10/war-portraits/