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DEATH DEALERS: A Marine's Life in Afghanistan, 2009
Stephen Dupont, Sydney, Australia
2010 Robert Gardner Fellow in Photography
2007 W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography
A portfolio set of 35 hand-printed on silver gelatin paper prints from original Polaroid negatives and medium format photography of a handwritten journal. Each photograph has been taken by the artist and copyrighted to the artist. The portfolio box is designed and handmade by the artist. This portfolio is made in an edition of 15 only.
$35,000 (plus $200 shipping)
"I choose to take a simple and intimate path in this project and simply asked all the Marines in the platoon to write their answers to the question 'Why are you a Marine?' in a small journal that I kept while I was embedded with them. While in the field I took the Polaroids of each Marine and gave them the positive as a reciprocal gesture for their participation and honesty and later back in Sydney printed from the negative."
"Its an up close and personal window into the lives of a Marine platoon in Afghanistan's most remote and lawless war zone. The Weapons Platoon or 'Death Dealers' are with the US Marines Expeditionary Brigade 2nd Battalion's Delta Company and have recently fought there way through the deserts of Helmand province to a forward operating base (F.O.B. Castle) located inside and ancient fortress overlooking the poppy enclave of Khan Neshin. This small mainly Pashtun and Balouch town lies 120km north of the Pakistan border and has been until recently a Taliban stronghold and poppy paradise."
"This small platoon of Marines faces each day as they patrol the badlands of southern Afghanistan where IED's and IDF are a daily ritual. The enemy plays with the young US marine's minds and souls with games of cat and mouse. The backdrop is a dusty and harsh desert landscape where temperatures sour daily to over 50 degrees celcius. A wild west like land of bazaars, poppy fields and small compounds where insurgents hide and plan attacks from. A classic guerilla insurgency where the Taliban have resorted to the planting of roadside bombs bigger enough to rip open the best APC's the Americans have, rather than stand up and fight them directly. Fatalities facing American and British forces in Helmand are mainly caused by IED's and IDF, approximately 80%."
"Weapons Platoon served in Iraq and were immediately transferred to operations in Afghanistan along with 20,000 other Marines making up President Obama's new military strategy and his most costly and ambitious foreign policy to date . . . 'Operation Khanjar' So many US servicemen have been killed in the past two months that it has become the deadliest time period since 2001."
"The Marines of Weapons Platoon reflect on life on the frontline, their ideals and missions, their personal feelings and how the transition from Iraq to Afghanistan is the right path. Their mission? To secure the areas in and around Khan Neshin and rid it of insurgents and drug dealers. To build trust in the local population into returning to their homes and fields. Only then will they leave . . . so they say!"
--Stephen Dupont
