I went with my dear friend Nalini to visit the War/Photography exhibition at the Annenberg Center for Photography. I was fascinated, but I felt that some necessary voices were absent. I cried. I fell in love with some soldiers; I questioned myself and my beliefs. I was horrified. I felt that I lacked the courage that people in my family have had, fighting in these wars. I mourned again not knowing my grandfather William. I thought of what my brother told me of his experiences in Afghanistan. I felt very small.
It's also very safe to look at these images in a building in Los Angeles. Aestheticized violence. I don't know for a minute what it's like to be under fire, to worry about being under fire, or about starving, or about much related to poverty or being truly dispossessed. I am overprivileged.
I felt guilty ogling one particular photograph of a man, taken by Harold Bristol, protege of Edward Steichen, showing a male nude, wet and sweaty, just after he had saved a downed pilot in the Pacific, and as he manned guns in a plane. Clearly, the photo [PBY Blister Gunner, Rescue at Rabaul, Papua New Guinea, 1944] is about the male body and sex, but the context is unexpected. It's disturbing and arousing and strange.
So much of war photography is about masculinity, hyper-masculinity, white masculinity, and defining it as unstoppable strength. It was moving, beyond moving, then, to see photographs like Al Chang's A grief stricken American infantryman whose buddy has been killed in action is comforted by another soldier. In the background a corpsman methodically fills out casualty tags, Haktong-ni area, Korea, August 28, 1950.
The holding of a comrade who is broken, grieving. A man allowing another man freely to express his emotions (of sadness, not rage). How often does that happen?
And I think again of my father-in-law and my grandfather, in WWII, fighting on opposite sides: my grandfather in his tank division, moving eastward, and my father-in-law on the Russian front until wounded, then fleeing west and hoping to avoid slaughter by the Russians.
My husband recently returned from visiting his dad, and asked him more about his experience in the war, and how it felt to kill someone, and how many men he killed, etc. In one battle on the Russian front, apparently his division ended up with more Russian POWs than they could keep and they killed them all. It sounded horrific. I was glad I didn't hear the story. I recently tried to watch Band of Brothers and couldn't make it past episode three. It's not that it isn't great acting. It's just that it's too real. I can watch the zombie apocalpyse and pretend that it's okay. But WWII really happened.
I have heard that my grandfather came back from WWII with PTSD that landed him in the hospital (I do come by my mental health issues quite honestly). According to a book I read, his tank division was involved in liberating a concentration camp. That task would be enough to fuck me up for a lifetime.
On another note, while in LA I had a lovely dinner with Nearly Perfect Man on Paper and his wife. It feels amazingly good to have great people in one's corner and to feel cared for; when I wrote recently that some people really understand me, I was speaking the truth. I also found that I remembered wrongly why he and I had not gone to museums when we were in Paris in December of 1995. I asked, "Were we museum-ed out or something? I can't remember why all we did was go to Pere Lachaise and do oddball things." He said, "I cannot think of a time ever when you'd be museum-ed out. It was because of the big strike. No museums were open. We tried the Centre Pompidou, the Musee Rodin, etc., and gave up. So we walked everywhere in the bitter cold and had fun anyway, looking at public sculpture, at the Opera Garnier, at the Arc de Triomphe, etc." Oh, yeah. The strike. We almost couldn't fly to Provence. I have a fairly remarkable memory, but not a perfect one. I was thankful to have him help me remember.
Mr. Nearly Perfect on Paper eagerly asked for a full recounting of my search and reunion, which Nalini helped me to provide. His evaluation and support were spot on. He has clearly never forgotten the needs of the little girl in my heart (and I am both fortunate and grateful for that). He even went so far as to bring me an unexpected present: a t-shirt from the Math Club at his institution, run by his undergraduates. There was a Math Day in honor of a woman mathematician who had taught both at Goettingen (where my husband got his Math degree) and at Bryn Mawr in the early 20th century. She was instrumental in the field of Math in which Mr. Nearly Perfect works. Always the thoughtful, creative one, is he.
And his wife is very, very cool (not to mention that she has figured out how to deal with his quirks, way better than I ever did). She, in fact, has a search mission of her own: she is looking for a surprise older sibling who was adopted out. I am hoping to help her with this search. It was fun to brag about Mr. Nearly Perfect a little, with her (all those languages he speaks! that Gainsborough portrait of his ancestor!). And to hear her complain, and to know what she was talking about, too--his shortcomings are not unlike my husband's (but my husband is definitely more of a pushover).
I am pleased with the way in which I spent my time away. I return refreshed, although the War/Photography exhibition was harrowing on multiple levels. I cherished the opportunity to be with one of my dearest friends (I didn't wail in Times Square this time!), and I reconnected with someone who also knows me very, very well (or at least once did, and still clearly does on some levels). It was lovely to hear that I am not a museum Nazi from at least two people I care about.
Perception is powerful. We all want to be seen and loved for who we are; that is one of the best gifts we can receive (or give to someone, if we are perceptive enough, in return). If that is my birthday gift this year, I will be very pleased.
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