Many of the images were bleak: sunburned soldiers sprawled over their cots in the crushing desert heat; deep drifts of sand with boot tracks leading to three green Port-o-johns; an Afghan solider in a doorway below an ominous mound of sandbags with a transistor radio pressed to his ear.
Then there was an American soldier standing in a lush field, exhaustion written all over his face. The temperatures had reached 120 degrees that day, and the men had been carrying 100 pounds of gear through dense, humid fields.
Photographer Ben Brody took a long look at the picture, projected onto a screen in the Dodge Room, Reed Campus Center, where he was presenting the last seminar in the 2014 Photographer Lecture Series.
“He was killed six weeks after I took this photo,” Mr. Brody explained of the solider whose portrait he had taken.
