Ashley Gilbertson – Bedrooms of The Fallen
Ashley Gilbertson | Bedrooms of The Fallen
Marine Cpl. Christopher G. Scherer, 21, was killed by a sniper on July 21, 2007, in Karmah, Iraq. He was from East Northport, New York. His bedroom was photographed in February, 2009. (Photo by Ashley Gilbertson / VII Photo)
30 August – 26 October 2014
Australian-born, New York-based photojournalist Ashley Gilbertson’s touching series honouring the men and women who have died serving in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. This is a project about who they were, not just soldiers, marines, airmen and seamen, but sons, daughters, sisters, brothers – and the bedrooms which they once called their own.
After covering the conflict in Iraq for 6 years (2002-08), photographer Ashley Gilbertson was feeling career fatigue and began to question his process as a photojournalist. It took a personal encounter with death to push his photography in a new direction. Assigned a squad and on his way to photograph a deceased insurgent who had been firing from a minaret, one of his escorts, Lance Corporal William Miller, was shot point-blank in front of him. When Gilbertson returned home, he realised that the photograph of a dying man that he could have taken at that time would not speak of the larger truth: war takes people away from those who love them. Bedrooms of the Fallen was conceived as a way to memorialise soldiers and marines who died as a result of conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq. With images of bedrooms that have been left intact, Gilbertson has created a highly moving series that reveals the personal losses of war.
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