As this war has entered its tenth year, our nation has become silently divided, the widening divide between soldier and civilian growing with each year. It has become more and more difficult to understand the life and trials of a deployed soldier and their family. Although most Ameri- cans support our brave men and women, they don’t grasp the magnitude of what effect this conflict, these deployments have on the families, and on the mind and soul of the soldier.
In documenting these images created by soldiers, Marines and airmen, our aim is to give a unique glimpse into the minds of these warfighters, to give America an inside look at what has gone almost entirely unseen to the vast majority of the public.
Many of these images are raw, and created in the moment on unconventional canvases in a very unconventional war. This art, this emotion on canvas will help civilians understand what itis to be separated from family, to lose one of your own in a blink of an eye, to get a feel, a taste of what 15 months fighting a very unpopular war is like. We want to bridge that divide grow- ing in America, we want to bring back the empathy that is lack- ing for these men and women, and empathy is an emotion that requires understanding, which is our mission: to bring understanding to Americans not familiar with the emotions of war.
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