U.S. photographer documented the human cost of war in Iraq "
When a suicide attack detonated a bomb in the unit's sergeant Ty ZIEGEL Marines, in Iraq, the explosion melted the skin on his face, broke his bones and he destroyed his arm.
The burns left him with no nose, no hair, no ears and eyed. It now has a canopy of plastic instead of the skull and a toe grafted on the hand replaces the thumb. The other arm was below the elbow amputee.
ZIEGEL is one of the most tragic in the new exhibition of U.S. photographer Nina Berman, in the New Yorker Jen Bekman gallery, but not the only one. She began portraying the wounded in Iraq, shortly after the 2003 invasion, but preferred not to photograph them in the hospital but in their homes, often in small cities throughout the United States.
The portrait of ZIEGEL it shows the day of their marriage, the bride dressed in white and a bouquet of roses, whose face impenetrable expresses a mixture of sadness, anger, fear and resignation. The boyfriend of 24 years, leads Uniform but it is impossible to perceive any expression in the face of which there is no big deal.
Berman said that began to make portraits to the frustration that is generated media coverage at the beginning of the war in Iraq.
"I started working on them not to see any representation of the human cost of war. At a press heard or read reports on injuries, but you never see any image, "he said.
Berman said it is interested not so much their physical wounds but the psychological models. "Photographed alone, mostly in their rooms, which for me are like small cages," he says.
Injuries devastating
Nina Berman said that despite regarded as a neutral observer, their photographs are anti.
"It's very difficult to defer the idea that war is acceptable when one sees harm caused to human beings."
Despite the fact that their images show mostly soldiers, also focuses on the wider impact of the devastating wounds.
"To the families is enormous. These are not things that just happen to a person, but to an entire family, "he deplored.
"Some enter the military with certain fantasies, dreams and hopes, and are devoted to achieving them, and suddenly, because they were in the wrong place and time, all that is running out."
Although Berman is happy with the success of these photographs, there is a book for sale, said he was surprised that people find shocking, after a four-year war that has left more than 27 thousand wounded in the ranks and has killed U.S. 3 thousand 700.
For her, the most tragic of its models is Sam Rose, a 21-year-old soldier who was blinded and lost a leg in an explosion. Berman portrait so close to the mobile home where he lives alone in rural Pennsylvania, with his artificial leg. Since her return from Iraq tried to commit suicide several times.
Via La Jornada
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