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I started out with this soldier work, where I photographed at Fort Drum, and photographed
almost 90 soldiers between tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. My motivation was to
see who volunteers for the army. I had a son who would be of draft age if there were a
draft, and I thought, "I don't know these people who would volunteer to be in the service."
And so I really, as a portraitist, just wanted to see who those people were. And then when
I was accepted to come there, which really surprised me, I felt, well, I have to know
exactly what I'm doing. And so I figured out what I wanted to do was make a vulnerable
picture of a soldier, which is quite the opposite of what they're supposed to look like.
I think that the photographs are definitely from a woman's point of view, and from a mother's
point of view. Well, I think that instead of heroic, they actually look vulnerable,
but I think they also seem very tender. They're so large, so they look like the head of a
fallen statue, but at the same time, you sort of want to hold them. I think that they're
very tender, and I've always sort of avoided what I think that was sappy pictures, or too
overly emotional or sentimental. But I think that they are very tender in that you're looking
at them as you would look at somebody with their head on a pillow, obviously. Who do
we see that way? We only see our lovers and our children that close up. So I think that
they're very human, and that's kind of what I meant, was to consider who these people
are, whose lives are on the line.
Avedon once talked about people confessing to the camera, which I think is true. People
show something of themselves, and so if you work with a large-format camera, they have
time to do that, rather than being caught. They reveal themselves to the camera.