Attention Servicemember

  • Dates
    2003 - 2018
  • Author
  • Locations Northampton, Kandahār, Baghdad

I went off to war for a decade. I came home and everything looked different. The whole world looked combustible, ready to ignite during the tiniest lapse in focus. I have photographed Attention Servicemember to represent what that experience looks and feels like to me.

For five years I was a U.S. soldier primarily engaged in making photographic propaganda related to combat operations in Iraq. A few weeks after I left the Army, I received a postcard that read, “ATTENTION SERVICE MEMBER: TIME TO REENLIST.” The card made the absurd threat that if I failed to respond, I risked being no longer in the Army. I left the Army but not the wars - I headed to Afghanistan, unarmed and unaffiliated, to photograph the American war there on my own terms, using different visual strategies.

The black-and-white photographs in this work were all made in the course of my daily life as a journalist, a forager, a husband, a veteran, and all the smaller roles I’ve played in the past two years. Rather than construct a narrative in a linear timeline, I use sequence and emotional continuity to link the images.

The images here are a photographic expression of my sleepless nights, my constant vigilance, my unreliable memory and my drive to continue physically and emotionally returning to the wars.

There is no return to “normal life” after long periods in war zones, once you believe that war is normal. I see war at the gas pump, war in the political choices that otherwise peaceful people make, war in our drug use, war in our economic system, in our refugee and immigrant populations, war in our epidemic of gun violence. Service members are shooting and bombing people overseas, but it doesn't end there. War is integrated with our most ordinary daily actions.

© Ben Brody - Hanging Cloud.
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Hanging Cloud.

© Ben Brody - Jose's gun.
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Jose's gun.

© Ben Brody - Camp Loyalty, 2005.
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Camp Loyalty, 2005.

© Ben Brody - Sadr City, 2005.
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Sadr City, 2005.

© Ben Brody - Camp Patriot, 2005.
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Camp Patriot, 2005.

© Ben Brody - Camp Nathan Smith, 2011.
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Camp Nathan Smith, 2011.

© Ben Brody - Kandahar Airfield, 2010.
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Kandahar Airfield, 2010.

© Ben Brody - Camp Hero, 2005.
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Camp Hero, 2005.

© Ben Brody - Sadr City, 2005.
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Sadr City, 2005.

© Ben Brody - Camp Ahmadkhan, 2013.
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Camp Ahmadkhan, 2013.

© Ben Brody - Unknown Location, 2005.
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Unknown Location, 2005.

© Ben Brody - Abandoned Camp, 2014.
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Abandoned Camp, 2014.

© Ben Brody - Moses, 2005.
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Moses, 2005.

© Ben Brody - Mirror, 2018.
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Mirror, 2018.

© Ben Brody - Anna, 2017.
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Anna, 2017.

© Ben Brody - Kandahar Airfield, 2014.
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Kandahar Airfield, 2014.

© Ben Brody - Camp Loyalty, 2005.
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Camp Loyalty, 2005.

© Ben Brody - Fair, 2014.
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Fair, 2014.

© Ben Brody - Becca, 2017.
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Becca, 2017.

© Ben Brody - Sadr City, 2005.
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Sadr City, 2005.

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