In the early years of the Iraq War, the photographs of Kael Alford and Paul Fusco provided a sharp contrast to the nearly bloodless war presented in mainstream American media. Alford, who first entered Iraq in March 2003, captured the impact of the U.S. military's Shock and Awe campaign on Iraqi civilians; Fusco chose to document the stateside effects of the war -- the funerals of fallen soldiers -- despite government restrictions on photographing the war's casualties.

While looking for publishers for their images of the war in Iraq, photographers Kael Alford and Paul Fusco both faced repeated resistance from the mainstream media. For two years, many of the photographs they had worked so hard to obtain went unseen. Fusco's images of American families grieving the deaths of their lost soldiers were eventually published in a photo essay entitled "Coming Home: Seven Soldiers Lay Their Fallen to Rest," which appeared in the January/February 2005 issue of Mother Jones, a left-leaning current events magazine. His images were also compiled into an exhibition called "Bitter Fruit" which appeared at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut, from August 2006 to February 2007. Alford's images of Iraqi civilians, which she had sporadically placed in magazines and newsprint, were published in the book Unembedded; photos featured in the book, which included the work of three other photographers, were exhibited at several universities and galleries around the country.

Click here to view images of the war taken by independent photojournalists Kael Alford and Paul Fusco.


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