A first-person essay by photographer Ashley Gilbertson, whose work from Iraq has appeared in the New York Times:
I didn’t want to go back. When I began reporting from Iraq in 2002, I was still a wild and somewhat
naïve twenty-four-year-old kid. Five years later, I was battle-weary. I had
been there longer than the American military and had kept returning long
after most members of the “coalition of the willing” had pulled out. Iraq
had become my initiation, my rite of passage, but instead of granting me a
new sense of myself and a new identity, Iraq had become my identity. Without
Iraq, I was nothing. Just another photographer hanging around New York. In
Iraq, I had a purpose, a mission; I felt important. I didn’t want to go
back, but I needed to–and for the worst possible reason: I wasn’t ready for
it to end. After twelve months away, I had a craving that only Iraq could
satisfy.
Link. Above: “American soldiers take a biometric scan of [Iraqi detainee] Ziad.” (Thanks, Clayton)
Gilbertson has a book coming out soon — Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, “A Photographer’s Chronicle of the Iraq War.” Here’s a recent radio interview on NPR’s “Fresh Air.”