Customer Reviews

This Is Our War: A Soldiers' Portfolio: Servicemen's Photographs of Life in Iraq

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I was touched by the pure simplicity of the book. The photographs show us everyday life from a 'you are there' stand point without all of the verbiage of a reporter or professional writer. I have several students who have enlisted with different branches of the military and this book is opportunity for them to see the mundane side of war as well as the brotherhood that war creates. Each snapshot is a story in itself. We have gone from the first TV war, Vietnam, to the first digital war, Iraq. Americans will get a mixed bag of life as they go through each of these photos.

The war in Iraq is different in many ways. One that I hadn't recogniced was the impact of digital cameras on how the war is recorded. Soldiers have always taken photographs -- in fact a new book has just been published on Patton's Photographs. But the advent of inexpenswive digital cameras means that virtually any soldier can have one.

In Iraq the ready availability of e-mail means that pictures taken by the soldiers and by his loved ones at home can be transmitted in an instant. Pictures can be taken without film and erased if they are no longer needed.

GQ Magazine managed to get some 10,000 photographs taken by the soldiers in Iraq. These are not the highly polished pictures you will see taken by the photojournalists, these are pictures taken by the grunts and lower level officers of their day to day life. It's an awesome book. One I found hard to put down, going through it several times.

As I write this review, it is Memorial Day in the United States, a time for remembering those who have sacrificed in conflicts past and present in defense of the nation. We are currently engaged in a conflict, one like no other in many ways (however, I am reminded of the words of Anthony Swofford, who wrote 'Jarhead', that every war is different, and every war is the same). One of the differences of the war in Iraq is the ubiquitous nature of personal recording devices - virtually every soldier and marine on the ground there has a digital camera, a cell phone that takes pictures, a video camera, or other way of making a personal chronicle. This gives a remarkable view and insight into the daily life and work of those who are fighting in Iraq.

This book is a collection of these photos. They are not professional-quality photojournalistic spreads - quite a number of pictures are blurry, grainy, or otherwise lacking in what would be considered 'professional' aspects. However, what they lack in that regard is more than made up for in the individual power of the subjects - the subjects in this case being both the photographers and the photographed.

The pictures here show victory and defeat, as such comes in small and larger ways each day in Iraq. There is hope and there is despair, but above all there is humanity, and this book captures current history in its most basic raw form.

This book has no particular political bent - like many images and icons, those contained here will be subject to multiple interpretations. What I took most from this is the need to remember those in the pictures, and realise that these are people who, like me, hope for a time beyond the war, and that such a time may come soon. This book is a tribute to current day heroes.

An interesting book made up of photos by the Soldiers, Marines, Sailors and Airmen who served in Iraq, Kuwait and Qatar. In this age of digital photography not only can anyone take a photo but they can review it in real time and when you have access to the internet you can send it home or to friends. This book reflects a wide variety of experiences of those fighting in Operation Iraqi Freedom: the grittiness, the discomfort (or relative comfort), the danger... it's all here in color.

This book is so much more than a collection of photographs. War in the digital age has provided our society with so many photographs and videos that we have become less and less affected by media coverage. This book, however, uses images taken by the soldiers themselves. As you view each page, as you read each caption, you find yourself transported to the war. Imagine snapping a photo of your battle buddies one moment, and in the next losing them to a mortar attack.
This collection of work will leave you smiling, crying, and hopefully thinking.

This is not National Geographic stuff, but if you find that being able to combine war coverage from the eyes of soldiers with a documentary approach of photojournalism done by complete amateurs, then you will be impressed. The book takes pictures that our brave young men and women shot with a simple digital camera and turns them into life in Iraq for our armed forces. Sometimes it's humorous and sometimes it's serious, but all the time, it is real and from the eyes of soldiers.

I love it and I recommend it.

This book is great and would have recieved 5 stars instead of 4. But some of it was kinda cheesey. Like the pics of the guys girlfriend. Who cares?And some jerk standing in front of the flag with praying hands trying to look hard. That guy sucks. Other than that. The pics are great and show alot of emotion. That's the good part. Guy looking hard standing in front of the flag with prayin hands. Uh no. That guy sucks

THIS IS OUR WAR: A SOLDIERS' PORTFOLIO: SERVICEMEN'S PHOTOGRAPHS OF LIFE IN IRAQ is simply outstanding: it offers powerful and personal photos all taken by the men and women serving in Iraq, thus going beyond a reporter's outsider impressions to provide nearly three hundred images culled from tens of thousands GQ collected from servicemen and women. From everyday life to combat, all aspects of the Iraq experience are illustrated.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

This book is a remarkable look into the daily lives, trials, and hardships our troops in Iraq are facing. The beauty and truth in the images taken by soldiers is a priceless glimpse into our mission there that every American ought to see.