This book tells a vivid and detailed experience of an american army soldier on different tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. The book begins and ends with black and white images of life before and after the army, images of a young girl, possibly Brody’s daughter, symbolizes innocence and a representation of what people are protecting by joining the army. A full bleed is used for ‘army’ portion of the book which helps continue the story and emphasize the scale of warfare and its effect. The book consists of many detailed image that are kept natural and unembellished, this draws out the rawness of war and the brutality that soldiers face.

Ben Brody is an independent photographer, educator, and picture editor working on long-form projects related to the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and their aftermath. Brody enlisted in the U.S. Army in 2002, when he was twenty-two years old, not because he supported the impending invasion of Iraq—even then he was “skeptical”—but because he wanted to photograph it. 

Brody quotes:

• I wanted them to feel the murderous heat and arbitrary death and relentless absurdity that came with my job
• You learned what pictures the Public Affairs Officer would release and what he wouldn’t … Soldiers looking calm or stoic. Yes. Soldiers looking angry or frightened or exhausted or confused or lost with eyes like the bottom of the ocean. No.
• meaning that my account didn’t conform to his tightly scripted vision of what victory was supposed to look like. (in reference to the regulation of certain images)

Narrative and design

An extremely obvious yet effective layout within this book is the margins/bleed of the images. The life before and after the army are all B&W images in different sizes and dimensions taking up certain parts of the page. In contrast the colour photos made during war time are full bleed images to emphasize the realism they represent and the lacking margin for error in the army. The full bleed also means that there is a lot going on within every page which symbolises the chaos of war. The use of media and newspaper extracts within the book support the realism that Brody is attempting to represent. The story is told from a strange perspective with images appearing as if an outsider is looking in, however the photographer was apart of the army with the men photographed. There are no images from the war portion of the book shown on the same page which draws attention to the importance and meaning of every single image. The title is a literal reference to and army letter received by Brody which further amplifies the theme of realism.