Photo By Staff Sgt. Eric W. Jones | Sharing their experiences and views on the exhibit, 1st Sgt. Robert A. Kilgallon with...... read more read more
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ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - Soldiers of the Army Reserve Medical Command attended the exhibit ‘The American Soldier, A Photographic Tribute, From The Civil War To The War in Iraq’ at the St. Petersburg Museum of History, March 18.
The American Soldier is an impressive exhibition that captures the essence of American soldiering over more than 150 years, ever since the birth of photography when the camera becomes a notebook to history.
“I was moved by the collection of 116 photographs of military personnel that spanned from the Civil War to the Iraq War,” said 1st Sgt. Robert A. Kilgallon, the first sergeant for Headquarters and Headquarters Company, ARMEDCOM in Pinellas Park, Florida.
“I had seen one of the photographs before,” said Kilgallon, “The one with a Soldier crying on a helicopter.”
Kilgallon explained that the photograph he had seen in the past was much smaller and he could not tell that there was a bag next to the crying Soldier.
“As I read the accompanying caption of the photograph … it totally changed my feelings of the photo,” said Kilgallon, a local St. Petersburg resident. “I then realized the Soldier was mourning for his friend who laid beside him in the body bag.”
The exhibition captures the danger and the frustration, the humor and the beauty, the camaraderie, the death and the victory that "The American Soldier" encountered in his odyssey through history.
United States Air Force Col. Andre J. Briere, the vice commander of the 6th Air Mobility Wing, MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, served as the guest speaker during the exhibits opening ceremony.
“At a time when less than one percent of our population has served in uniform … things like this, opportunities to see the sacrifices of the fighting men and women who have served our nation through our history is fantastic,” remarked Briere. “As we look at this exhibit it reminds us to appreciate the sacrifices they gave.”
Cyma Rubin, the exhibit’s curator and producer, said in her remarks that the idea was born in 1995 from a photograph she had seen of an American Soldier during WWII, but did not take shape until 2003.
Rubin said she started developing the exhibit with more than 4,000 photographs and spent countless hours handpicking the final 116 photographs.
“The photographs were selected to tell our story, who is the American Soldier?” said Rubin. “How do we really see them … other than as a uniform in a parade?”
As the project took shape, she decided to use photos that depicted the nine wars between the Civil War straight through to Iraq, so that regular Americans saw the everyday reality of the life of Soldiers.
“We are not in the battlefield, we are not in the camps,” said Rubin, who edited and produced the exhibition catalog. “This gives people an opportunity to see so many things that go on everyday there; there is repetition from war to war.”
“This is not a blood and guts exhibition, this is about the camaraderie, humor, family, friendship and heroism in some cases the ultimate sacrifice,” she said. “It is a look at the American Soldier for who he and she is.”
Rubin said she communicates her ideas through the medium of photography using large photographs to bring the viewer to that moment in time.
Moving pictures are there and then they are gone, she said. Still images freeze a moment and save it forever.
The exhibit of still images has been on the road across America since 2007 and viewed by more than one million visitors.
Among the visitors, Rubin recalls a special visit in Florence, South Carolina.
“A group of children came in … they were about nine years old, they were absolutely silent,” said Rubin who observed their reaction.
“They came through the exhibition and a little boy came back to a photograph in the Civil War section,” she said, adding that the picture was of a family in a Confederate camp.
She explained that the conditions for the Union Soldiers were better than those of the Confederate Soldiers, so often Southern families would travel with their Soldier to the camps. The photograph that mesmerized the child, was of a Confederate family, with the mother, the father, the sister, a little boy, a baby and a dog.
Rubin said that the little boy was standing in front of that photograph for quite awhile and she approached the boy.
Rubin: Is there something you would like to know?
Boy: Well, I would like to know what happened to the dog when the war was over.
Rubin: Well, I’m sure the doggie went home with the family.
Boy: Okay
Five minutes later, she said, the boy came back and was still staring at the photograph. “I went back over: ‘Is there something else?”
Boy: You know, I know how that little boy feels about his daddy going to war because my daddy is in Iraq.
“Suddenly, I realized he felt he was no longer alone, that this is happening and it has happened before.”
This photographic tribute is traveling the United States in a multi-year tour; currently the exhibit can be viewed at the Thrasher-Horne Center for the Arts, Orange Park, Florida, until Feb. 14, 2015.
For more information about the ‘The American Soldier: A Photographic Tribute’ at http://american-soldier.com/about/
| Date Taken: | 03.18.2014 |
| Date Posted: | 12.30.2014 09:15 |
| Story ID: | 151204 |
| Location: | ST. PETERSBURG, FL, US |
| Web Views: | 107 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Soldier History: Developed over 150 years, by SSG Eric W. Jones, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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