Afterwar Photographer: Ochberg Fellows Collaboration Wins Film Award

Ochberg Fellow Mike Walter and his CCTV America team have won an award at the New York Festivals 2014 International TV & Film Awards Competition for their documentary "Afterwar Photographer," which focuses on the work of Ochberg Fellow Lori Grinker. 

Click below to watch the short film, and scroll down for the documentary summary:

It is commonplace to call those who go to war “heroes.” In photographing the casualties of war, Lori Grinker, did something heroic. She dedicated 15 years of her life to show a truth about war that has become harder for Americans to ignore after more than a decade of fighting in Central Asia—that when soldiers return from a distant battlefield, they bring that battlefield with them. To gaze at Grinker’s photographs is to journey with her into the “danger zones” that remain long after the shooting stops—the scarred landscapes of the heart. To venture there, and back – and for so many years – took the kind of fortitude that made Grinker our hero. Grinker’s camera shows us the myriad faces of war—a mosaic of sorrow, pride … and confusion. What viewers see is what many governments mostly avoid showing their citizens at home—the missing limbs, the angry scars … the souls whose otherwise invisible wounds can be seen etched on their faces. As Grinker told us, the survivors walk away with a deeper understanding for the words of Hemingway when he wrote: “There is nothing worse than a war.”

Click here to check out Grinker's photography project "Afterwar: Veterans from a World in Conflict."