For more than a decade, the United States has been fighting wars so far from the public eye as to risk being forgotten, the struggles and sacrifices of its volunteer soldiers almost ignored. Photographer and writer Ashley Gilbertson has been working to prevent that. His dramatic photographs of the Iraq war for the New York Times and his book Whiskey Tango Foxtrot took readers into the mayhem of Baghdad, Ramadi, Samarra, and Fallujah. But with Bedrooms of the Fallen, Gilbertson reminds us that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have also reached deep into homes far from the noise of battle, down quiet streets and country roads-the homes of family and friends who bear their grief out of view. The book's wide-format black-and-white images depict the bedrooms of forty fallen soldiers-the equivalent of a single platoon-from the United States, Canada, and several European nations. Left intact by families of the deceased, the bedrooms are a heartbreaking reminder of lives cut short: we see high school diplomas and pictures from prom, sports medals and souvenirs, and markers of the idealism that carried them to war, like images of the Twin Towers and Osama Bin Laden. A moving essay by Gilbertson describes his encounters with the families who preserve these private memorials to their loved ones and shares what he has learned from them about war and loss. Bedrooms of the Fallen is a masterpiece of documentary photography and an unforgettable reckoning with the human cost of war.

About the Author
Ashley Gilbertson's photographs have appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, and other publications. His work is included in collections of major museums throughout the United States, Europe, and Australia. Among numerous honors, Gilbertson won the prestigious Robert Capa Gold Medal for his photographs of the battle of Fallujah and in 2012 was awarded a National Magazine Award for the New York Times Magazine feature of The Bedrooms of the Fallen project.

Reviews
"The need to see America's twenty-first-century war dead, and to make them seen-to give their absence presence-has consumed Ashley Gilbertson for much of the past decade.... To picture death, Gilbertson decided to picture how and where the dead had lived. He set about photographing their bedrooms, many of which had been preserved by their families in much the same spirit that Gilbertson preserved them with his camera: as memorials.... But taken together, these photographs defy any effort to seek in a room's furnishings an echo of its former occupant's fate. Their power lies in reminding us of the disconnect between life and death." (Philip Gourevitch, from the foreword)"



Book Information
ISBN 9780226066868
Author Ashley Gilbertson
Format Hardback
Page Count 120
Imprint University of Chicago Press
Publisher The University of Chicago Press
Weight(grams) 992g
Dimensions(mm) 23mm * 32mm * 2mm