The Gray Line, 32’x40”, Black and White
This body of work, “The Gray Line,” (2005 – 2010) mines my complex and layered feelings about the military, a subject with which I have a long, familial connection. For many generations most of the men in my family earned their living and defined their purpose as military officers. Growing up in this military culture, my childhood was saturated with orderliness, hierarchy, patriotism and certain knowledge of “the enemy”.
True respect aside, I struggled to understand war and how one could take command to engage… I wanted to understand the organization of violence and power, and I yearned to humanize the tough exteriors of these men against all of the anxieties I felt when thinking of their jobs and of their structure. Despite the long line of military men in my family, my generation has declined to enroll, ending at least for now, that long lineage.
All Images are Courtesy of the Artist
After much effort, I garnered access to West Point Military Academy, an academy that has trained a number of men in my family and has produced a great number of high-ranking officers and U.S. politicians. I used a 4×5 view camera to produce images of cadets that explore ideas about masculinity, expectation, allegiance, sexuality, vulnerability and death, catching them before they are fully formed soldiers and officers. While traditional portraiture of soldiers serves to show their achievements, excellence and their sense of duty, my images seek to describe the complicated psychologies under their developing personas. I hope to extract something uniquely emotional about each cadet while also imposing upon the images certain reservations and attractions I have about soldiers in training.
Staging the figures in natural and sometimes bucolic environments disrupts the straightforward, documentary elements of the photographs. The environments are not heroic nor do they represent the almost certain destination of most of the cadets upon graduation; blurring the signs of their purpose or of the political. It represents my way of taking back the control in a power dynamic that has always shifted away from my favor.
It also allows me to reference the often staged images made during the Civil War… that while taken on the battlefield, were technically incapable of catching live action. The choice to make them in black and white was both technical and conceptual. The absence of color allowed for greater experimentation with the relationship between figure and ground allowing me to utilize the physical nature of camouflage and the ideas of the ephemeral.
The resulting images balance between the languages of the documentary and of the staged with an effect that provides a compelling counterweight to live-feed coverage of our wars and of traditional military portraiture.
