Timothy Greenfield-Sanders Shoots The Soldiers of the Iraq War

A few month back, my wife Sara and I had the pleasure of having our portrait taken for GOOD Magazine by the renowned New York based still photographer Timothy Greenfield-Sanders.  One afternoon when we were visiting Timothy at his studio in the East Village, he looked over at us and asked if he could show us a series of images that he was currently working on. 

Over the next twenty minutes, Tim proceeded to take out fifteen or so portraits that he had just taken.  Each one was of a soldier who had lost a limb during the Iraq war and had been fitted for prosthetics.

By the third photograph I looked over at Sara and found myself absolutely speechless. The photographs captured the essence of the emotions that these soldiers have - still brave and dignified, but forever scarred both emotionally and physically. 

Tim told us that he was doing the portraits as part of a documentary for HBO. 

Tim's photographs of the soldiers have stayed with me in my head for months. And then, just as I was forgetting about that afternoon at Tim's studio, earlier this morning as I was taking a cab to the office, I noticed that the portraits were now being shared not just with Sara and I, but with all New Yorkers, as they have become the centerpiece an outdoor ad campaign that HBO has launched for the documentary Alive Day Memories, which premiers on September 9th, at 10:30pm.

For me, this is one of the rare cases where advertising has so much more "to give" then just to sell another television program.  While the portraits are being used to drive awareness and tune-in of the HBO show, they easily stand on their own. I feel that as a collection, they are one of the most sensitive and courageous documents of the war yet shown to the public.