Category: Art and War

This picture by Bill Putnam shows a US Army patrol taking a brief halt on top of an Afghanistan hill.

I like it for its muted color palette–grey, green, brown, some black–and the array of emotions reflected in the faces and bodies of the soldiers.  Some are relaxed, others display tension.  Their equipment hangs upon them not obtrusively, but organically, even the weird mounts for night vision goggles that protrude from their helmets like antennas and the M4 in the foreground that seemingly sits far too high on its bearer’s torso.  The way their gazes go off in different directions and the bulb like prominence of the helmets reminds me of Larry Burrows’ great picture of a hilltop scene taken during the Vietnam War:

Burrows’ picture is far more dramatic, of course, and rightfully famous.  But who’s to say the soldiers in Bill Putnam’s picture aren’t themselves minutes away from a similar scene of devastation and carnage?

I’ll begin populating this blog by featuring some of my favorite Iraq and Afghanistan war photographers.  First up, Bill Putnam.  Bill and I served together on a deployment to Kosovo when he was an active-duty soldier.  Now out of the Army, he has embedded with the 101st Airborne Division on tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

If you visit Bill’s website you’ll notice his skill at portraiture.

That skill is also featured in this article from the Pittsburgh City Paper.

Here, though, I’ll highlight Bill’s work at greater range, in part because he gave me permission to use these pictures (a while back, and for a different project, true) and in part because they were taken in eastern Afghanistan, where I served.  Most of all, I like the tilt of the rockscrabble terrain, the blue skies and billowing clouds, and the soldiers that stitch the earth and sky together.