Photographs of, and candid interviews with, soldiers of the Iraq War, documenting the extraordinary challenges they face.
Read More
Gray Land is a collection of photographic portraits of Iraq War veterans accompanied by excerpts from candid, unsupervised interviews with each soldier and images documenting the stress of daily life in a war zone.Barry Goldstein spent two years photographing and interviewing over fifty actively serving members of an armored battalion of the 3rd Brigade Combat Team - one of the army's veteran units. He photographed and interviewed men and women of all ranks, including a psychologist who treated soldiers on the battlefield (but cannot get her own medical care covered), a college astrophysics major who came under fire on his first day as a platoon leader, and a PTSD sufferer who survived the destruction of his combat outpost by a devastating car bomb.The statements recorded here cover their deployments as well as the period at home and offer an unprecedented look into the professional and private lives of the extraordinary men and women who serve. Goldstein writes: "The narratives presented here are not unique to any single unit, or to any one conflict. Wars exact common tolls, and these stories will be familiar to many soldiers. The rest of us will learn something more about the demands of citizenship in death's gray land."
Read Less