Nina Berman is internationally known for her portraits of American soldiers injured in the Iraq war. Her photographs are not your typical images of heroic military men, glowing in the valor of war. They are mostly solitary young men, back at home, struggling with newly injured bodies and souls. They are moving images of our casualties of war, a notable contrast to the flashy recruiting commercials young people are increasingly bombarded with.

Berman’s photos of veterans have been widely reproduced in the press and she was awarded a prestigious World Press Photo award and a grant from the Open Society Institute. The photos are also featured in a traveling exhibition and in book form, Purple Hearts: Back from Iraq, accompanied with each soldier’s story. In an effort to educate young people about the realities of war and help them talk about it more openly, Nina also shows them in high schools.

Nina Berman has traveled widely, photographing different places and cultures for a variety of print media. She is also on the faculty of the International Center of Photography. When she is not working on her Purple Hearts project, what intrigues her most is photographing America: evangelical Christianity in her series Megachurches and the surreality of homeland security operations in Homeland Insecurity.

After returning from discussing her images of veterans in two Massachusetts high schools, Nina Berman took some time to talk with Catherine Clyne about photography, the soldiers’ stories and what motivates her work.

What inspired you to embark on Purple Hearts: Back from Iraq, your project of photographing injured veterans?
Basically, when the war first began, I felt that I wasn’t getting a realistic picture from watching the news reports. I kept hearing stories of five or six soldiers wounded, but was never seeing any images. So I thought I would try and track some of these soldiers down and in a very simple way show that war does create casualties.

What do the soldiers think about this project?
The ones I’ve heard from are really happy to be included. They feel that their story has been immortalized in some small way. Almost everyone I contacted was eager to participate. I was very open about the project. I said that this is a chance for you tell your story and have your portrait taken. They all want to be remembered.

What are your observations about some of the different soldiers you’ve come in contact with and photographed?
I can’t say that they all have similar feelings about the war. For me, I was most struck by the fact that so many of them joined the military because they wanted to do something good and purposeful in their lives but did not know what, and desperately wanted to get out of the towns they were living in. The most tragic part is that they had all these dreams but are now back in these kind of dead-end places, and now severely wounded both physically and psychologically.

Wow, that’s quite a journey. How are they doing?
Not so well. Some of the ones I kept in contact with had this fantasy that they would go in the army and come back, and they’d be well trained, set for college, and their future kind of all laid out. Of the soldiers I have kept in contact with, none have been able to go to college.

Why is that?
Because they’re simply not prepared to do that. I did meet one soldier who came back pretty much with a balanced head on his shoulders and no physical injuries, and he went to apply to school and discovered it’s a reimbursement program—you have to come up with the money, and then they’ll pay you back later.

Many who joined had never left their homes before. A lot of what young men and women think before they become soldiers is based on a fantasy in a hard-sell. Many of them had a hard time in high school to begin with, and then they come back and are trying to integrate not only into the civilian world, but to try and make peace with the fact that they are maybe half the physical person they were. They don’t even necessarily know how to go about applying to college, much less figuring out how to get reimbursed for it. A couple tried it and weren’t able to hack it.

That seems like a kind of betrayal because a lot of kids think that going into the military is a stepping stone to college, and the military seems to portray itself as that. Why isn’t the military more aggressive about helping them get into college?
I don’t think they see it as their role at all. Once the person is discharged, they are no longer the responsibility of the military. And the Veterans’ Administration is not involved in giving them job training or the kind of counseling they need to make them self-sufficient adults.

What kinds of responses to these photos have you been getting from the general American public and from young people?
I would say that across the board, people are very moved by the images, and three years into this war, still seem kind of shocked by them. I think it’s because people have this general image of a wounded soldier as someone on the frontlines collapsing or on a stretcher being held by his fellow soldiers. My pictures are very different. Very few of them are in uniform. They are photographed at their homes. There are no patriotic colors involved. They all look intensely lonely and alienated. I think people are kind of struck by what obviously will be a lifelong condition in one way or another. It brings it home for them, that the war doesn’t end just when the soldier is discharged.

I take the pictures into high schools—I was in two high schools yesterday, in fact, and some of the kids started to cry.

Why is it important for young people to see these images?
When I show pictures like this to young people, I want them to know that there are all sides to war, and what the military commercials are showing them is not necessarily the realities they or their friends will experience. I want to give them another view of war.

It’s not easy to get into high schools. I went into a high school where we almost didn’t make it in because a department chair, who was a Gulf War vet, got really upset that a photographer was going to come in and show pictures like this. Meanwhile, you have mandatory ROTC assemblies, where the entire school has to show up. You have schools where all four branches of the military have tons of literature and posters out there in front of the lunch tables. Every time I hear stories about it, I’m amazed at how intense the militarization is in high school.

In talking with kids, does the aggressive recruiting effort come up?
Yeah. One kid said that a recruiter went to meet him at his job. A girl at another school got very shy during the question/answer period. It was clear that a recruiter was very heavily on her and she said that he goes to her athletic meets. It’s much more intense than we imagine. They talk about friends who signed up. Most of them don’t necessarily want to go, but ask what is my alternative? And that is the saddest part. There is very little alternative you can offer a poor kid that has no money for school, living in a family that isn’t very supportive.

What do you say to comments like that?
It’s the hardest part of what I’m trying to do. I’ve talked to lots of veterans, lots of activists and people about this. There is no simple answer. There are scholarship programs. There is City Year out of AmeriCorps. But the bottom line is this country has become very militarized and the only place that money is being spent is in military programs. It’s really hard to say to a kid, think about this decision, maybe there is another way. And then they say, what is the other way? And you’re like, I don’t know…

I imagine people who are moved by your photos must ask you how they can get involved and help. In your experience, what do you feel veterans need most from American civilians?
I have to say, it’s a very complex issue and one I’m still trying to sort out. Some people write me who just want to send money to particular soldiers and I help them do that. I’ve talked to some veterans’ organizations and say people want to help, they want to be involved, they don’t want to be part of this military civilian divide. They say to me that they can’t figure out ways for all these civilians to get involved. Just have them send a check. Maybe there is some sense to that; maybe there isn’t. But it is definitely part of the problem. What you have now is a civilian population that can pretty much ignore the war. You have the military population that is very isolated from the civilian population.

I kind of give a challenge. I say, find out where your VA hospital is; go to a vet center and volunteer. I think in this Internet age, people have gotten accustomed to thinking that if they just send an email or click to send some money, it means they are participating. It can be a nice form of participation, but it doesn’t lead anywhere in the sense of creating community. Most people don’t want to take up that challenge. I think the best organization I’ve come upon which lets non-military people join is Veterans for Peace. They do a lot of good things.

Do people accuse you or these images of having an anti-war message?
People can say—and have said—that a picture of a wounded soldier maybe in itself is inherently an anti-war image, because it goes against the message of war and the glory involved with showing war. If that is the way they feel, then so be it. I wouldn’t challenge that necessarily.

You have been quoted as commenting: “The dead tell no stories. It is the wounded that survive and present us with our own complicity.” What sort of complicity are you talking about and how do these photos address that?
The complicity is that we are supposedly living in a democratic society where our leaders are answerable to the public. When you live in a nation that goes to war unprovoked, you have to realize you are somehow to blame. Even if you didn’t support that war, you are somehow complicit because you live here.

In terms of the photographs, the way they are shot, the subject directly confronts the viewer. The other thing about the pictures is there are very few that have any other people in them. It is just the soldier. What that suggests is that there is no outside support system. If you think about imagery in the past of wounded soldiers, there is usually someone helping that soldier, there is some suggestion that the soldier will end up okay. In my pictures it is quite the opposite. In that sense I feel there are challenges to people who look at them. Are you going to let this person whither away alone?

To view Nina’s photos of soldiers and read their stories, see www.purpleheartsbook.com. To view a portfolio of Nina Berman’s photographs and learn more about her work, visit www.ninaberman.com.