Do the portraits from HBO's "Alive Day" documentary compel us to see veterans more clearly, or just to watch HBO?

 Guest Column By Michael Shaw, Ph.D.    
         
          
                  
                  
   

Given advances in medical technology and the tactical nature of the
ongoing conflict in Iraq, American combat troops are now surviving
injuries that would once have been fatal -- and attracting the attention of
visual documentarians as a result.

Making portraits of the wounded, however, is a delicate matter.
Damage is as much, or more, psychic as physical. Innumerable variables
are in play regarding dignity, memory, and the reconstruction of
post-combat identity. And then there are still other factors in front
of those, including the context and purpose of the images themselves.

Over the past year, I have been aware of and spent time studying two
sets of portraits of injured American Iraq war vets: Nina Berman's
award-winning series Purple Heart: Back From Iraq and a newspaper photo feature titled Wounds of War by South Florida Sun-Sentinel photographer, Anastasia Walsh Infanzon. Because photographer Lori Grinker includes a few injured veterans in her distinguished series, AfterWar, I have been looking at relevant examples there also. (Full disclosure: Nina Berman contributes to my BAGnewsNotes blog.)

© Timothy Greenfield-Sanders

Then, two weeks ago, I received an email announcing a new documentary series from HBO titled "Alive Day Memories: Home From Iraq."
The program, which consists of individual interviews conducted by actor
James Gandolfini with ten injured Iraq war veterans, premiered Sept. 9.
According to the press release, "the documentary about wounded soldiers
surveys the physical and emotional cost of war through memories of
their 'alive day,' the day they narrowly escaped death in Iraq." Billed
as "a multiplatform event," the project also features portraits of the
veterans by the well-known photographer Timothy Greenfield-Sanders.

Together these wounded veteran series constitute an important new
sub-genre of war photography that seems to have sprung from three
converging factors: 1) the continued escalation in Iraq, 2) recent
leaps in medical technology, including fascination with cyborg-like
associations, and 3) the fact that there were previously few, if any,
photographic studies dedicated exclusively to portraits of wounded American war veterans.