Monica Haller

Now in paperback, Monica Haller's acclaimed Riley and His Story presents the daily life of the Iraq war, as lived and photographed by Riley Sharbonno. Haller and Sharbonno met in college before the latter was deployed, serving as an army nurse at Abu Ghraib prison from 2004 to 2005. Sharbonno used his camera as an almost prosthetic device to record the events his memory suppressed; on other occasions he used the camera to “store” overwhelming experiences with the aim of processing them later. Many of these images are indeed overwhelming: “These aren't the photos we're likely to find in grandma's photo album 50 years from now,” he rightly observes. The photo pages in this book are variously sized, intersecting and overlapping to mimic the unstable nature of such memories, conveying the blurry jumble of amnesia and trauma. It is an invitation to all--veterans, family and friends--to face the realities of war.

Monica Haller's project Riley and His Story presents the daily life of the Iraq war, as lived and photographed by Riley Sharbonno, an army nurse who served at Abu Ghraib prison from 2004-2005. Riley used his camera as an almost prosthetic device to record the events his memory suppressed; on other occasions he used the camera to "store" overwhelming experiences with the aim of processing them later. Many of these images are indeed overwhelming--"these aren't the photos we're likely to find in grandma's photo album 50 years from now," he rightly observes--and the photo pages in this book are variously sized, creating intersection and overlap to mimic the unstable nature of such memories and convey the blurry jumble of amnesia and trauma. Riley and His Story is an invitation to all, including war veterans, family and friends, to encounter the realities of warfare as related by one who was there.