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Matinee: Stacy Pearsall's Veterans Portrait Project
11 November 2023
Saturday matinees long ago let us escape from the ordinary world to the island of the Swiss Family Robinson or the mutinous decks of the Bounty. Why not, we thought, escape the usual fare here with Saturday matinees of our favorite photography films?
So we're pleased to present the 526th in our series of Saturday matinees today: Stacy Pearsall's Veterans Portrait Project.
In this 7:25 video from 2014, we see photographer Stacy Pearsall at work on her Veterans Portrait Project, an ongoing effort to capture the diversity of the nation's military service members.
Pearsall herself served 10 years as an Air Force combat photographer and a selection of those images begins the video. After being wounded in action, sustaining an injury that ended her military career, she started treatment at the VA where one World War II soldier asked if she was there to take her grandfather to his appointment.
She smiled. "No, I'm the veteran."
That started a conversation. And Pearsall thought to herself she really should have had her camera with her to take this man's portrait. He was a national treasure.
So she started bringing her camera to her appointments. And soon started making portrait appointments without doctor appointments.
The video includes several of these sessions during which you can see Pearsall engaging in conversation, getting the veterans to tell their story, sharing a laugh and, finally, seeing the portraits.
Revealing as it is to see the real time session, we were touched by a 2017 PBS NewsHour presentation at 2:08 in which Pearsall remembers one such session:
"For veterans like myself," she says at the end of that piece, "every day is Veterans Day." And for those who love them, too.