brave hearts
The stories behind the most emotional images from the Iraq war
“I waited with her family for about eight hours for him to return, and she was pacing back and forth like a wild animal . . . The Humvee pulled up, he jumped out, and she charged at him with such force, it almost knocked him over! That’s why the whole picture’s tilted — because I wasn’t expecting that angle to happen, him being knocked over.”
BY 2008, he’d shot Vladimir Putin, all of America’s living presidents and just about every other global leader — and frankly, Platon tells The Post, he was sick of politics. So when the New Yorker asked the photographer to focus on the men and women in our armed services, he was happy to do it.
For the next few months, he met and photographed newly minted West Point cadets and covered training sessions in the Mojave Desert and deployments to Iraq. And then he shot those who returned — the lucky ones, to giddy reunions; the rest, to rehabilitation or their final resting place, at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.
Thirty of those life-size images are now on display at Chelsea’s Milk Gallery (450 W. 15th St.) through July 24. Simply titled “Service,” these 2008 photos are black-and-white, but the emotions in them have infinite shadings of gray.
“I would have thought it was all about war, and it turns out to be about love and respect,” says the 48-year-old Greek-British photographer, born Platon Antoniou, who lives in Manhattan. “I never found so much affection and mutual support as I did when I was doing this project.” He says he regrets not following up on their lives since, but swears he’ll never forget the people who went before his lens. Here are the stories behind six of those photos.