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Photolucida
September 2009
On Sale: August 25, 2009
112 pages
ISBN: 1934334073
EAN: 9781934334072
Paperback
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Non-Fiction Photography
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have lost America's
attention, and some would say, never really had it. Despite
all the immediacy of new media, America's view of these wars
has largely been sanitized, incomplete and remote.
Photographer Peter van Agtmael aims to change our
perceptions with his compelling new book, 2nd Tour Hope I
Don't Die. From 2006 through 2008, Peter van Agtmael was an embedded
photographer who followed the sweep of the conflicts between
Iraq, Afghanistan and the United States. He captured the
range of the American experience, from chaotic night raids
in Iraqi cities to long patrols through isolated valleys in
the mountains of Afghanistan. The images are unsparing yet
nuanced, revealing tense medical evacuations and graphic
casualties of suicide bombings as well as moving portraits
of young soldiers and their families recuperating, mourning,
and suffering. In the end a delicate humanity emerges amid
the chaos and brutality of combat. The book distills - in van Agtmael's photographs and words -
the complexity of that experience from the point of view of
a young man seeing many others of his generation facing
tough choices, grave responsibilities and unpredictable
fates. By turns gritty, haunting, and deeply moving, the
book is a cogent reminder of the stark and enduring
realities of war. This is a book about conflict, but also an intimate journey
into the lives of the people van Agtmael met and befriended.
Just 24 years old when he first went to Iraq, he instantly
identified with the soldiers. Their stories are told
alongside his own recollections. Specialist Raymond Hubbard
lost his leg in a rocket attack in Baghdad on the Fourth of
July, 2006, and later collaborated with van Agtmael to
create a record of his recovery and struggle to adapt to a
new life. Matthew Ferrara's family mourns a son who did not
come home from a patrol in Afghanistan. Soldiers who sometimes initially voiced suspicion ultimately
urged van Agtmael to show what was going on in their world
because they recognized that, without pictures, it would be
as if their experiences never happened.
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