CSUCI Art Gallery Opening - Showcasing the PTSD Project
At the end of every school year, Cal State - Channel Islands has a student art gallery where the gallery is open for a couple of weeks with over 1,000 pieces of artwork at the opening. My photography professor, Larry Lytle, urged me to enter one of my PTSD Project images, and after a little hesitation, I decided to print the photograph of Cliff. When I was starting to design the project, I wanted the prints to be life sized, so the viewer is looking directly into the eyes of the models in the series; so I printed the image at three feet wide by five feet tall. Once I got my photograph printed and delivered to the school's gallery, the curators decided to display it in the main gallery space; so as soon as you walked in you would see the print.
Skip forward several weeks to the gallery opening on May 3rd, I decided to stay around my print throughout most of the evening to help answer questions about the piece and see if I could find anyone who the image affected. As the night went on, I started talking to a group about the PTSD Project and how I want to relate it to those who served. As I was talking, an individual walked up and started listening, then realized that I had photographed the image, and he said to me:
"Holy shit man, you photographed this? I was Air Force during the 2001 Invasion, but barely made the cut to stay out of Turkey and I got shipped back to the States. This is exactly how I felt, and I know a bunch of guys who felt just like this, and I haven't ever seen anything like this before, and it means so much to me that you're creating this. This really touched me and really means the world to me. Thank you brother."
We talked for several minutes after this before he decided to walk around the rest of the gallery, but interacting with just one veteran and knowing that I was helping to tell his story with how he felt meant a lot to me. Even if some civilians don't understand what it's like for our first responders and military veterans, I am just happy that I was able to reach out to at least one person.
