Thank you for exhibiting these photos. They need to be seen. They are as stunning and meaningful as the hospital scenes in Oliver Stone’s “Born on the Fourth of July.”

Reisa

I tend to think it’s a much more complex image than you’re giving it credit for. In addition to it being an inherently anti-war image (by showing the human consequences), it also really speaks to the redemptive power of love. What a horrible, tragic, difficult thing for this young couple to go through; how incredible and wonderful that they are staying together. I’d like to think that my husband would still love me if something horrible happened to my face. The look on the young bride’s face tells me that wasn’t an easy, flip decision for her but rather a complex and difficult one. It is ultimately a deeply human photograph.

Life just keeps going on, whether we want to look around ourselves or not. I personally find this image to be incredibly brave. I don’t know if I’d have their courage (or the courage of the photographer to set up the image) if put in their position, but I hope so.

– Amy

You SHOULD be upset. Many people are more than upset, they’re disabled for life, disfigured or dead, all ostensibly fighting for our ever-eroding freedoms. Thousands are dead, tens of thousands of soldiers are wounded, HUNDREDS of thousands of Iraqis are dead.

The images of this war and its wounded have been so tightly controlled that American people don’t have a clear picture of the costs and consequences. It’s a difficult show: the photos are hard to look at, the stories are painful to hear. I’m proud to offer a venue for them to be seen and heard in.