Location: Iraq
Brief: Capture images that show the imprisoned nature of British soldiers working in Iraq
Commissioned by: self-commissioned
After photographing the invasion of Iraq in 2003 as an embedded photographer with the Royal Marines, I returned in 2005 to run a combat camera team.
Two years after the initial invasion, the US/UK occupation of Iraq had become an uncomfortable stalemate. Trapped inside huge fortified bases and armoured vehicles by increasingly hostile and well-armed insurgents, soldiers conducted mundane work patterns and slipped into oblique personal routines within the vast alien environment of Iraq.
Intimate moments – sunbathing, desperate graffiti, days-to-do marked on a calendar, a lover’s photograph, satellite phone calls home – were offset by dangerous night patrols and the repatriation of lost comrades.
