Sketching the State of American Vets

                     The body of a veteran represents the walking manifestation of war. In the German Weimar Republic, it was the breadth of WWI veterans with prosthetic limbs that inspired many artists of the likes of Otto Dix and others of the New Objectivity movement in the 1920s and 30s to depict the effects of technological change in warfare and society after the war. 
                    The Joe Bonham Project sponsors artists to depict the physicality of war through sketches and representations of the wounded in military hospital across the states. The project realizes the potential of representation to implant a kind of emotionality that photography struggles with because of it's implicit claim to truth. What is especially appealing is that these sketches represent communions between artists and veterans that took time, trust, and intimacy to create. These however, are not interviews and the exchange was not so much verbal as corporeal and I daresay even spiritual. Moreover though these drawing might fall into the portrait category they aim to depict more than the person of focus but a collected series of young individuals who are burdened with the corporeal weight of our political decisions. 
                Look for a comic book, a traveling exhibition, and future releases of images in the future. I'll be sure to post them online as I find.