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Afterwar review excerpts and support of the project

One of the sections that is most painful in its immediacy - and the only one in color - presents images from Lori Grinker's long-running project about war veterans. Addressing the lasting effects of war on the surviving wounded, it doesn't stint in its depiction of maimed bodies…

The psychological residue of combat is seen on the face of Henry Green, a British veteran of the Korean War, who survived the brutal Battle of the Imjin River in 1951. Almost half a century later, he still suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, as his worn, anxious face, a tear starting from his eye, suggests in a 1998 close-up that Ms. Grinker took during a monthly group therapy session for war veterans.

The New York Times, December 26, 2005
“Picturing Some Shocks That Flesh Is Heir To”
Grace Glueck

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Photographer Lori Grinker's images of war survivors (many of them maimed) gain power through their direct witness, as things normally concealed or ignored ... are made visible. Like all of Grinker's photos, the image is matter-of-fact, but respectful and generous in leaving space for both sorrow and laughter.

Minneapolis Star Tribune. November 17, 2006
“Critical mass: Lori Grinker's photographs”
Mary Abbe

She describes her work as "a portrait, documenting the human toll of war, rather than a catalog of scars and lost limbs. ... My challenge wasn't just to make a portrait of a person, but to make a photograph that would transcend their personal tragedy to become something universally symbolic and understood."
With exceptional skill as both a photographer and an interviewer, she has most assuredly met that challenge.

Sacramento Bee, April 24, 2005
“A poignant look at what happens to the injured 'After War'”
William Endicott

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Lori Grinker's arresting color portraits of war veterans are accompanied by the stories of her subjects in sizable captions. From a Sri Lankan child soldier's admissions of brutality to a former Russian soldier's maternal instinct to keep her sons from facing the battlefield, these stories engage the viewers not only aesthetically but cognitively.

The Daily Star, Lebanon, March 01, 2007
“Exhibition on social documentary and reportage gives viewers work to ponder slowly”
Nichole Sobecki

Multimedia:

PICTURA Pixel

Time Magazine

The Digital Journalist

You quickly realize – both from her photos and from observing how she works – that her level of involvement is out of the ordinary. In short, Lori Grinker is one of those special journalists who merits our attention and our support

Sydney Schonberg
Pulitzer-prize winning journalist whose work on the Cambodian genocide inspired the film,
The Killing Fields.

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