I spent Memorial Day at the Eyes Wide Open exhibit in Grant Park. The exhibit consists of a pair of boots for each member of the U.S. military killed in Iraq.
The boots are arranged in rows by state. The long lines of boots are visually striking and reminiscent of a field of neatly arranged headstones in a military cemetery. However, the effect is much stronger. My eyes seemed to be trying to conjure-up all the invisible soldiers that my imagination was seeing standing at attention in those empty boots.
Each set of boots has an index card attached to it with the name, state and age of the person who was killed. Some of the boots also have letters and photographs that have been attached to them by family members, so they become these small, personal memorials. I went to the exhibit without a plan as to what I would be photographing, but soon started shooting the boots with photos attached to them. I en
ded up photographing almost all of them. You can see the collection of photos here.The boots have been on display, often outdoors, for the past several years, and many of the attached photos and letters are decaying. To me this was a moving and powerful metaphor for the individuals who have died in the Iraq war; the photos seem to represent the decaying memories of those who have been killed.
The photos and letters also put a very human face on the tragedy of all the empty boots. As of May 28, 2007, the number of U.S. personnel killed in Iraq was was 3,455. I first saw this exhibit in 2004 when the number was about 500. On Memorial Day alone, 10 additional sets of boots were added to the exhibit.
During the month of May, 116 American were killed in Iraq, making it the deadliest month of the war since November, 2004.
