Lori Grinker Photography

This project originated in Israel and the Occupied Territories in 1986, just prior to the first intifada. I met Israeli veterans who inspired me to document their lives after war: the rehabilitation process, the effect their experiences had on their personal relationships and their changing views of the conflicts in which they had fought. In these former soldiers' experiences I heard echoes of the experiences of Vietnam veterans from the United States. Their reception at home was radically different, yet their alienation, nightmares and pain seemed strikingly similar. It is this shared experience “after war” that I wanted to capture.

In 1989, with support from Life, I traveled to Vietnam and Cambodia to photograph ex-combatants from different sides of the region's conflicts. Thus began a fifteen-year journey seeking out veterans' stories. My photographs depict the war that rages on after the combat ends. These men, women, and children have walked the fields and survived. They have emerged with new ideologies, conflicts, questions, and emotions–they have the special knowledge of the killer, the hero, the defeated. AFTERWAR is a meditation on war after the fighting has ended, illuminating the legacy and cost of conflict.

AFTERWAR: Veterans from a World in Conflict, was published in 2005 by de.MO. An exhibition of the photographs is now touring (for the exhibitions list please see my CV).
For information about the traveling exhibition please contact: mail@contactpressimages.com, or call Jeffrey Smith in New York at 1-212-695-7750.