Aftermath:
Portraits and Reflections of Veterans in Recovery
2020 - 2024

The  wars fought in Iraq and Afghanistan cost 8,000 U.S. military service members their lives. Of those who survived, approximately thirty thousand have subsequently taken their own lives, acts resulting from post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD), Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), or Military Sexual Trauma (MST). They were our sons, our daughters, our neighbors, our friends.

This horrific number doesn’t account for lives endangered by alcohol abuse, drug addiction, or domestic violence. Thankfully, many service members with PTSD and other hidden wounds seek help from the Massachusetts General Hospital’s Home Base Veterans Program in Charlestown, MA. Because the two-week clinical course is so intense, the program is broken up by Respite Weekend at Harvard Polo Farm in Hamilton MA, and at other horse farms in the Boston area.

Over the past four years, I’ve volunteered as the unofficial Harvard Polo “respite weekend photographer”, documenting the various activities which happen at the Farm. I’m a fine-art photographer, so exploring the documentary format was somewhat new for me.

From July 2020 to January 2024, I was privileged to work with more than 200 current and former service members at the Farm. Approximately 50 of them allowed me to take their portraits. The vets and I were able to create intimate images which reflect the person they are, who they want to be, their hopes for the future and the experiences they’re trying so hard to process.

The photographs above are just a few of what we produced, and which were on exhibit at the Wenham Museum, Wenham MA in 2024. I hope this exhibit will provide some small insight into many veterans' ongoing battles against the hidden and implacable enemy of PTSD  - and help sensitize a civilian public to the often deep, personal, and indelible costs of military service.

The exhibit will be on display at the DeMenil Gallery at the Groton School, Groton MA
in 2026.
For more information on this traveling project, please fill out the contact form on this website.