The project documents images, birthplaces and personal notations of the 4,952 American causalties as exhibited at the Venice Biennale curated by Rob Storr in 2007, and suplimented as causalties grow.
In her ongoing project, American Servicemen and Women Who Have Died in Iraq and Afghanistan (but not Including the Wounded, nor the Iraqis nor the Afghans), Emily Prince seeks to make a pointed political statement by offering a detailed rendering of the human cost of war. The project serves as a memorial, containing individual, hand drawn portraits of the United States casualties of the War in Iraq. Each sheet of paper includes the portrait of the soldier which is posted on the website as well as the soldier’s biographical information including their name, hometown/state, age, date of death, and other personal, distinguishable facts. All fifty states as well as the United States territories are included in the project Using only gridlines, Prince created a map of the United States on the gallery wall and each portrait is hung in correspondence to the soldier’s hometown location.
The numbers kept coming up in the daily reports. Five here, fourteen there, one day after another. And then the growing figure mounting over a thousand. Peripherally it was ever-present, but still only an abstraction. It was no longer enough to know how many. I needed to see pictures of them, to familiarize myself just a tiny bit more with what was happening far from my warm home. And it really isn’t much. It too is a mere summary, just one more step beyond bare numbers.
Yet for me it is something. It means spending time with each one. It is looking into their eyes to see who is now gone. It is following the line of their brow and trying to perceive the expression there. It is a visual and visceral exploration of these individuals by way of their faces. It is my own eyes and my hand tracing out some very slight acquaintance with what’s occurring.
As an investigation it is little, and it is incomplete. It addresses only the Americans who have died. Neither the Iraqis nor the Afghanis are pictured. However, this gap in my own representation does not symbolize any deliberate or meaningful exclusion. I feel deep sadness for the people of these nations.