Maslov - Veterans: faces of World War II

Veterans came into being not only through a personal interest in the legacy of the Second World War, but also through a sense of urgencya sense that the stories of a generation and conflict that have indelibly shaped our modern world are soon to be lost. My photos strive to document each life from both a historical and an individual standpoint; in doing so, I am interested in exploring the relationship between the past and present, the personal and collective. The result is a mosaic of people who were all engaged in this incredible tragedy at one moment and in the next were living their separate lives in different corners of the planet. The way that the world came together and then stretched out again, permanently changed, has always been a source of wonder and inspiration for me. Every individual and every country remembers the war differently. It is this diversity of experience that I hope to have captured so that these stories remain and these lives are remembered.

This project began while I was transitioning in my own work from documentary photography to portraiture and thinking about how to tell stories through portraits. Veterans seemed to be the perfect project with which to explore that union, for I was equally interested in the historical and personal aspects of each individuals experience. While the interviews helped articulate the historical account, I chose to capture each story through a portrait in order to give a glimpse into the private universe of each person. Perhaps the personal nature of each portrait allows us to reflect more deeply upon the relationship between the large-scale, generational narrative and the unique life story of each veteran.

I was in Moscow with an exhibition when the idea first began to form (although I am sure it had been in my subconscious for quite some time), and I started reaching out to local veterans through friends, family, social media, and archival research. Once I started working on the project, I found an active network of veterans associations in many countries, and the momentum of social media allowed me to gather a wide range of personalities and narratives, as a result of which the project expanded more than I could have imagined. Especially in smaller countries, the veterans were immensely proud of the role they had played in the war and maintained strong, supportive communities, which they graciously welcomed me into. While I originally had planned to focus on only a few major countries, I slowly began to realize that I needed to seek out more and more voices in more and more locations to begin to do justice to the diversity of experiences of this generation. The project expanded organically and unexpectedly from there. This could happen only because people were so helpful and supportive at every turn, and I believe that is a testament to the way in which almost every one of us feels a personal or emotional attachment to the stories of World War II and to the generation that survived the war.

It was important for me to photograph each person in the interior of his or her home because this environment helped me understand the private world of each individual and helped to portray the contrast between the personal aspect of the portrait and the historical scope of the interviews. I wanted to include things that would signify the individuals and show their lives through their objects and spaces. While it may sound like a clich, in many cases, their rooms could talk. I tried to understand where to place the hero of each shotthe veteranwithin each environment to create a harmony between the veterans and their settings.

Many of the people I photographed have since passed away, and I will be forever struck by their respect and openness. Most of the time, they were happy to be interviewed, and sometimes they seemed to feel it was their final chance to tell their story; I do hope if that is the case that it was meaningful. In other cases, the interviews were more difficult, and there were those who did not want to talk. There were a few instances when people told me things they had never spoken about before or had blocked from their memories. Regardless, a lot of the veterans replied with a note after they received their photograph, thanking me, in many different languages, for coming to speak to them. It is this respect for human connections and generosity of spirit that was one of the most powerful parts of the entire experience.

I cannot precisely formulate the impact that this project had on me, but I can leave you with some of the things that these stories left me thinking about. The timing of this project was very important, not only because there are relatively few veterans left from the Second World War but also because their age made the subjects talk differently about their experiences. There was an incredible power of forgiveness, no matter how big the atrocities were that they had endured, and it was clear to me how much ones perspective changes with time. These stories also made me reflect on how much our world has changed and how different the contemporary generation is. By their early twenties, these men and women had the weight of the world on their shoulders in a way that most of their grandchildren have not experienced. Learning how they went through such tragedies and still maintained the desire to live illuminates so much about the resiliency of the human spirit, as well as the triviality of many of the concerns of todays culture. All of the people whom I interviewed showed a great level of respect, thoughtfulness, and awareness of their environment that sometimes feels lacking today in our increasingly developing world.

This generational difference shows itself in an explicitly visual way and informs my approach to photography. We are living in an age when visual stimuli, in a variety of media, populate the waking moments of our lives. Our memories are inhabited by fragments of lifeexperiences from around the globe, objects, products, familiar facesall intricately tied together in a complex web of associations. This visual overload has, in its worst manifestations, made our tastes less discerning and ultimately has degraded the standards that define meaningful photography. Instead of reveling in a complex photo that encourages intense visual engagement and reflection, many viewers now expect to devour and digest imagery in one gulp. It is essential to me that every image I release embodies a sense of purpose and meaning, provokes thought, and sparks dialogue.

I hope I was able to achieve this with Veterans.

Sasha Maslov

NEW YORK, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES

My name is Stuart Hodes, originally Stuart Hodes Gescheidt. I was born in Manhattan on November 27, 1924. I grew up in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. My father had trouble with his ears and went to a warmer climate. I think he and my mother just were happier apart. I attended PS 98 for elementary, then Brooklyn Technical High School, which was all boys. I didnt like that. But I loved the things we studied, which included every kind of shop: sheet metal, woodwork, forge, foundryI enjoyed working with my hands.

I remember the day of the Pearl Harbor attack very well. My brother and I were in the kitchen of our apartment in Flatbush, and we jumped up and down in excitement. We both wanted to get into the war.

I wanted to be a pilot. Id read the ads in the paper, and in 1942, I went to a recruiting office in Times Square. I was almost eighteen by then. I asked about it, and they said, Well, youre going to be drafted in a couple of months anyway. And I was drafted into the Army Air Corps in March 1943we didnt call it the Air Force yet. We wore army uniforms. I went to Camp Upton in New York.