This is an excerpt from the first story that will appear on The War Project. The speaker is a veteran and Army photojournalist who was deployed to Iraq in 2004. Here, he describes his experience photographing the aftermath of car bombs.
Every one of them were different. The consistencies were the body parts, the smoke. I remember seeing, like, seared brain on the side of a car. And the crowds. There were always so many crowds. The threat level was up extremely high, and they would gather around you, and just look at you. And there would always be, like, a big crater, blood everywhere. At first, you know, I wanted to take pictures of car bombs because that was how the war was being fought. I guess it’s like when you’re a solider, you wanna fight, you know, when you’re in that situation, you wanna do it. And that was my way of adding to the fight. And then I got there, and I was like, “How in the world could I ever wanna photograph this, this devastation, these pools of blood?” You would see, like, body parts, like a little foot, of a girl. Those car bombs, those are probably one of the worst things that I’d ever seen. It wouldn’t be the worst thing I’d experience, for sure. There’s just so much death, you know? And it sucked. But I had to take the pictures.[Image]