Photo By Staff Sgt. Aaron Patterson | Marine photojournalists Sgt. John Martinez, Sgt. Bryan Nygaard, Staff Sgt. Alfred...... read more read more
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During the month of September, I had the privilege of representing the U.S. Marine Corps at Photoville, a photography exhibition hosted under the Brooklyn Bridge in the Dumbo neighborhood. Going on its sixth year, it is considered by the New York Times to be New York’s premier photo festival. Over the course of two weeks, thousands of people visited the exhibition, which was set up in a small shanty town of more than 50 refurbished shipping containers stacked on top of each other.
Photographs mounted on the walls inside each container were shot by photographers from around the world and told a variety of different stories. Stories that included the effects of climate change, the Syrian refugee crisis, mineral excavation in Myanmar, and even the protests in Charlottesville, Virginia.
“It’s to get photography stories out in the public, to connect us with everyone from around the world,” said Dave Shelley, co-founder of Photoville. “Everybody can see that we are one planet, one condition, one people, and we share a lot of similar interests that connect us together as a society.”
Our container had 17 photos on display that were shot by Marine photographers and embodied our current marketing brand idea “Battles Won.” Each photo depicted different battles Marines fight and win. These battles can be against a physical enemy on an actual battlefield or an internal battle against self-doubt or the battles to better one’s community. The carousel of images illustrated the Marine Corps’ experience from recruit training, counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan, to humanitarian relief.
I later learned that the idea of the Marine Corps being there was proposed by photojournalist Teru Kuwayama, who had extensively documented Marines in Afghanistan seven years ago. Teru, who is now the Instagram community manager, helped put Shelley in contact with Marine Corps Recruiting Command. According to Maj. Neil Ruggiero, the director of the Marine Corps Communications Office in New York, Teru met with him and Shelley over dinner and simply suggested, “Why not the Marines?”
At first, I didn’t think the Marine Corps would fit in at a photography exhibition in Brooklyn, the hipster capital of New York; I couldn’t have been more wrong. The general reception of everyone who came to see our photos was overwhelmingly positive. I came to realize that the stories our photographers tell are not that much different from stories told by the other photographers at the event.
Throughout the week I was there, I and several other Marine photographers spoke to hundreds of people about our photos. I had the pleasure of talking to many native New Yorkers about my photo, which showed Marines running off a landing craft on to the beach of Breezy Point in Queens to assist in the relief efforts following the devastation of Hurricane Sandy in 2012.
Many of the people I talked to were able to remember the Marines being there during that time, many had no idea that the Marines did anything other than go to war. I was able to speak to the idea that Marines fight battles against natural disasters as well as our nation’s enemies. The same training and capabilities that allow Marines to travel across the world to take the fight to the enemy also allow us to help people in crisis. I would frequently point another photo in our display that showed an assault amphibious vehicle (AAV) and tell them that it is designed to take Marines from ship to shore during an armed conflict, but it can also be used to help people. In the wake of Hurricane Harvey, Marines used AAVs to rescue more than 400 people from the Houston area who were stranded because of torrential flooding. I believe telling people these stories gave them a different perspective on the Marine Corps.
The majority of the people who visited our display were blown away by the quality of our photos, but had no idea that the Marines had photographers in their ranks, or that combat photographer was an actual job in the Marine Corps. Marines officially began documenting their exploits through photography at the outset of World War II when the Marine Corps created its first public relations division. Marines were trained to be photographers, known as “combat cameramen” and “combat correspondents,” and sent to the Pacific theater of war. It was there that these jarhead journalists produced images that showed the American public that Marines were winning hard-fought battles in places like Saipan, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. Since then, Marine photographers have continued to tell the Marine Corps’ story of winning our nation’s battles at home and overseas.
“A lot of people don’t understand that we are photojournalists,” said Staff Sgt. Alicia Leaders, a fellow Marine photojournalist from Menifee, California. “They think that we’re just Marines taking photos on the side, but this is actually our job: to tell the Marine Corps story and we do that through a lens.”
Diana Tabak, a retired patient educator from Toronto, was impressed by the Marines’ images, but more so by talking to the Marines who took the photos.
“What strikes me is, this is very important, the community interaction,” said Tabak. “It’s so wonderful. It brings everything to the human level. I think, in this day and age, with all that’s going on, we need as much mutual understanding as possible.”
You could say that mutual understanding was one of the many successes of being at Photoville. Throughout the event, I was able to walk around the different containers to see the stories being told by other photographers. A common theme I saw among the different containers was the idea of human displacement. I was very humbled on a personal level to see photo stories of people all around the world who have been forced from their homes for causes such as natural disasters, tyrannical regimes, and economic plight. Prior to coming to the event, I was oblivious to the fact that in 2016, nearly 65 million people around the world had to leave their homes, their communities, and sometimes their country in order to survive. As a husband and father of three little girls, I tremble at the idea of having to raise them and provide for them in a dangerous region such as war-torn Syria or avoiding genocide in Myanmar. As a member of this small world, I empathize with those people and hope that the powers that be intervene to allow for peace to have its day.
That is the power of photography, the power of storytelling.
My hope is that the Marine Corps will become a mainstay at this photo festival so that we can tell our story and give people a better perspective of what the Marine Corps does for them and also learn other people’s stories as well.
| Date Taken: | 10.04.2017 |
| Date Posted: | 10.04.2017 09:53 |
| Story ID: | 250526 |
| Location: | BROOKLYN, NY, US |
| Hometown: | HOUSTON, TX, US |
| Hometown: | MENIFEE, CA, US |
| Hometown: | OCALA, FL, US |
| Hometown: | UNION, NJ, US |
| Web Views: | 350 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
This work, Marines participate in New York Photo Exhibition, by CWO2 Bryan Nygaard, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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