Photograph (c) Jessica Hines /All Rights Reserved
Photograph (c) Jessica Hines /All Rights Reserved
Photograph (c) Jessica Hines /All Rights Reserved
The Reflection: "In September of 2009, I visited the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington DC for the first time...What are missing from the wall are the names of those who died war-related deaths: from suicide, from injuries, and from exposure to harmful chemical substances." Photograph (c) Jessica Hines /All Rights Reserved
The Reunion: “Brothers Forever” was a phrase often heard mentioned and saw written in their photo albums commemorating time together in the war." Photograph (c) Jessica Hines /All Rights Reserved
The Remembrance: The toys, reminiscent of the games we played as children such as “cowboys and Indians”, embodied the notion of the cultural ideal role model for us. This “hero/tough-guy” role model was encouraged. Photograph (c) Jessica Hines /All Rights Reserved
The box stood packed away high on a closet shelf for over twenty-five years. Packed by my mother, it contained the letters, photographs, medals, and important papers that had once belonged to my deceased brother, Gary. It was serendipitous that I came to open the box and read the letters. Not having read them since I was a child, the time period was brought back to life for me. It was as if I could hear my brother speaking – it was as if he were still alive and I was listening to him talk about his life. + + +Artist and storyteller Jessica Hines, uses the camera’s inherent quality as a recording device to explore illusion and to suggest truths that underlie the visible world. At the core of Hines’ work lies an inquisitive nature inspired by personal memory, experience and the unconscious mind. Hines began to cultivate her creative disposition early in life and her love of the arts led her to attend Washington University in St. Louis, where she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. Continuing to pursue her interests, she studied photography at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where she received a Master of Fine Arts degree. (from My Brother's War)Jessica approached me to design a portfolio to best showcase her Photo Essay, My Brother's War. This was to be sort of a book 'dummy' to show potential publishers her intention behind her project in which she attempts to gain a better understanding of what happened to her brother, Gary, when he was a soldier in the Viet Nam War. Drafted, he served two years and returned home a victim of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Ten years later, he took his own life.
I was honored to be asked to work on this beautiful and moving project. I was impressed with the amount of research Jessica put into locating and speaking with her brother's wartime friends and attending the reunion of her brother's units in Viet Nam: The 178th ASHC, The Boxcars and the 132nd ASHC, Hercules, as well as traveling to Viet Nam to retrace her brother’s “footsteps”. Hines photographed her brother's letters, written home during his service in Viet Nam, which run throughout the seven chapters. I particularly wanted my cover design to reflect the emotion I felt when first imagining Gary's Army dog tags, the absence of the person. Jessica won a multitude of photography awards this past year, including the International Photography Awards: three Honorable Mention awards for Editorial: War/Conflict, Fine Art, and Deeper Perspective, PX3 Prix de la Photographie Paris: 1st Place Fine Art and PX3 Book Award in People’s Choice Award, Lens Culture International Exposure Awards 2009: Honorable Mention, The Mind’s Eye 2009 at The Center For Fine Art Photography: Director’s Award. Her work was selected by the Pulitzer Prize-winning photo editor, Stella Kramer, and published in Portfolio Showcase, Volume 3, 2009. Her portfolio was chosen as one of Photolucida’s 2008 Critical Mass Top 50 and she is a finalist for The Aftermath Project Grant in 2010, among others. Jessica's work has been selected for Houston's upcoming FotoFest 2010 Portfolio Review in March and her work continues to be seen in The New Yorker magazine.
Struggle
Katie at Natural History Museum, 1997
Animalia, 2009
Storage, 2009
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