Cardinal Stritch shows The Face of War

Summer in Milwaukee is brief and fickle. It is a time to forget about the long, cold slog of what passes for spring, to get outdoors, attend the festivals on the lakefront. Paradoxically, we rush to relax, to enjoy the warmth before it vanishes. When it is warm it is glorious!

Summer in Milwaukee; who wants to be reminded of war? Even before the change in the weather, the mood of the country has shifted. Never fully engaged at home, after ten years the nation has become tired of war. But the fighting continues. The news from Afghanistan, like the uncertain weather here, is ambiguous: There has been progress; but it may not last. The Taliban seem to have been weakened, but there is fear of resurgence once the U.S. draws down its troop strength as planned this summer. And life for the troops themselves, as well as the Afghan people remains fraught with tension. Although the daily effort to survive has become easier, the unpredictability of violence is ever present.

In the midst of these divergent summer realities CardinalStritch University has brought us an exhibition of photographs from the Vietnam War. Do photographs from that war have any relevance to our current lives or provide a context for understanding the on-going predicament in Afghanistan and Iraq? I think they do.

The show is called “The Face of War: Vietnam Combat Photographers.” Unlike many of the now iconic – and to most of those of us who lived through it, searing and unforgettable – images from that tragic and divisive period in our collective history, most of these were taken by largely unknown military photographers. Half of the exhibit is award winning work by the late Robert J. Ellison, who has ties to Milwaukee and who died at the age of 23 in combat in Khe Sanh. The rest were done by members of the Department of the Army Special Photographic Office. The emphasis, as indicated by the title, is on the people involved. Most of the subjects are individuals. They are soldiers and civilians, American and Vietnamese.

If it weren’t for some of the captions, the photographs would reveal nothing of politics or military strategies. There is no reason for fighting in the faces that stare out of these frames. There is no anger, no patriotic zeal. Mostly we see numbing fatigue.

“The Face of War” is an exhibition, but there is little impulse to view the photographs as aesthetic objects. This in no way implies that they are inferior as pictures, poorly composed, or visually uninteresting. The quality of printing varies. Some of the images have been enlarged to a point that exaggerates the graininess of film; others are lush and beautifully toned. Some are in color, some black and white. But that is not the point.

The wall text makes a point of honoring the extraordinary talents and efforts of the photographers, and rightly so. But I don’t feel it diminishes their achievements to say that it is the subjects that are most affecting, not the varying styles or techniques of the photographers. What unifies this show is the consistent attention that is paid to the common humanity of the people being portrayed.

A shirtless American casually carries his weapon, his tanned skin contrasting starkly against a background of billowing bright purple smoke. A soldier is caught in the simple act of shaving, framed by sandbags. A platoon crouches in a trench as the earth above explodes and showers around them. A Catholic priest leads troops in prayer on bended knees.

In one photo, a line of people – helmeted U.S. soldiers carrying rifles, Vietnamese women in white shirts – wade through chest-deep water. We cannot see where they have come from or where they are headed. We do not know why they are there.

Wars are fought by ordinary people. The victims who suffer and die are ordinary people. We who live at a distance from our current war must go to some lengths to avoid thinking of this truth, for we too are ordinary people and it is likely to disturb our comfortable lives. Maybe we find it possible to wage war because we can go on about our daily lives and we can enjoy our summer activities. I found it revealing to take a short break from my own reality to gaze with compassion into the ordinary “faces of war.”

The exhibit runs through July 31. A closing reception will coincide with Gallery Night, July 29, and will feature a talk by the curator of the Wisconsin Veterans Museum as well as live music by Guitars for Vets. For gallery hours, directions, and more information about the exhibit, go to the Cardinal Stritch website.

The images that accompany this post are courtesy Cardinal Stritch University.

Revisiting Vietnam: The photography of Larry D’Attilio

“Get to know your subject” is an appropriate mantra for aspiring and veteran photographers alike. Many of the most admired photographers have been known as much for their subjects as for style, technique, or conceptual approach to the medium. Yosemite Valley belongs to Ansel Adams; the lowly green pepper became Edward Weston’s forever monumentalized icon, and although many photographers have trained their cameras on wars, none is so enduringly identified with that vast subject as Robert Capa.

If people don’t soon begin to associate contemporary Vietnam with Lawrence D’Attilio it won’t be for his lack of trying. Over the past four years, D’Attilio has traveled to that distant land many times, often spending months on location. The depth of his exposure is clearly evident in the work that is on view at Redline Milwaukee through the end of September. This is no travelogue. In fact, in this unconventional installation, with a trio of shows related only by their common subject, formal experimentation almost eclipses the artist’s mission to bring Americans up to date on this complex land. The desire to express that very complexity is what integrates three rather distinct bodies of work.

Tucked in a back corner gallery, color prints in a traditional documentary style depict entrepreneurial women who have managed to create small businesses with the aid of a microloan program. But D’Attilio is not content to show us neat rows of carefully framed images. The other two legs of this triadic exhibit have less in common with traditional photographs than with installation art in other media. Upon entering the main gallery, one is confronted first by enormous mixed media collages that the artist titles “Time for New Women.” The physicality of these pieces combined with their larger than life depictions of young Vietnamese women elevates them from commonplace portraiture; they become totemic metaphors for an ever-changing and unpredictable contemporary global culture.

The third and most unexpected component of this installation occupies the center of the gallery space. Large transparent black and white images on film are suspended from wires. They swing freely as visitors pass in between and around them. A reductive process has created stark graphic images that almost seem hand drawn. During the opening reception this installation was accompanied by a jarringly discordant sound track of music and ambient sounds of traffic recorded in streets of Hanoi. We are transported out of our normal lives to the frenetic and mysterious culture of Vietnam that shifts even as we try to make sense of it.

It is an exhibition that could be called “photography without borders” so of course I was intrigued. Redline, with its open spaces and flexible display systems, is the perfect venue for such a complex show. Vietnam, which continues to confound most Americans 35 years after the cessation of hostilities, is a challenging subject and the scope of D’Attilio’s examination of it is ambitious. Try to see it before it closes Sept. 30.

For more information go to Redline Milwaukee.

But wait…there’s more! Ambitious as this show is, D’Attilio has two additional concurrent exhibits of photography from Vietnam in the Crossman Gallery at the University of WI – Whitewater.

You can also see more of D’Attilio’s work on his website.