This Is Our War: A Soldiers' Portfolio: Servicemen's Photographs of Life in Iraq
Memorable not for their artistry, but for the perspective they provides, these amateur photographs, collected by GQ senior writer Friedman, provide a record of the war in Iraq that is both more mundane and intimate than most media images: A woman is baptized in one of Saddam's bathtubs. Six-hundred-fifty million dollars of supposed oil-for-food money is discovered in one day. A soldier's gun is trained on a smiling young boy. A shepherd tending his flock studies a Humvee. Group photos of battalions and divisions lend a yearbook like feel to the volume, while a wife's sexy portraits spice up the collection. When two Black Hawk helicopters collided in the fall of 2003, killing 17 U.S. soldiers, readers learn about its effect on an Iraqi civilian who lost his roof. An automobile accident stateside is the only narrative about an individual soldier's death. More contentious chapters in the war's history are lightly glossed (the one Abu Ghraib photo included seems mostly like a nod to the obligatory, though the accompanying narrative is surprisingly candid). Notable for its lack of pretense, this compilation of soldiers' snapshots nimbly avoids politicking in its portrayal of life on the ground in Iraq.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.