The three series of portrait photographs by Suzanne Opton, economically entitled ‘Soldier’, are presented in chapters, each distinct from the others, though linked by a common thread. These are quiet studio images by a portrait photographer who, reading reports of reintegration problems encountered amongst some of the troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, responded by making a project well away from the battlefield. Opton realised she knew no one directly involved in the ongoing campaign in the Gulf, and has stated in interviews that she simply wanted to ‘look into the face of someone who'd seen something unforgettable’. The realisation of this body of work followed a prolonged period of research, one in which Opton encountered continual unwillingness by the military to give access to their personnel. Following a fortuitous phone call to her local base at Fort Drum, permission was eventually granted. Perhaps understandably, these images were made at the beginning of the war, under the guise of an art project, before the ongoing campaign began to evidently deteriorate.

I am interested in these images because they are so unlike my own, focusing on the human form rather than the landscape to illuminate the relationship between war and damage. What, then, is the connection between the way portraits and landscapes convey damage, trauma, ruin and decay? While damage to the landscape is recognisable – be it shattered trees, a bomb crater, a bullet ridden building – damage to individuals is harder to detect. What makes Opton's portraits compelling is their ambiguity: is she suggesting that these soldiers are merely resting? Or inferring that they are actually damaged – mentally, emotionally and physically?

In these images, soldiers Jefferson, Morris and Pry all appear bathed in soft light, clearly defined in colour by a large format camera, their heads resting on a table; simple almost subtle images. An initial impression of their head position, unusual within portraiture, suggests these images might have been taken prior to sleep. It is the disarming nature of the faces in Chapter I that sets them apart within a series that also documents soldiers in uniform and soldiers embraced by loved ones. Jefferson looks peacefully at the lens, apparently at ease with his surroundings, Morris's eyelids droop, her gaze down at the table, while Pry has his eyes closed, lying at peace. Little evidence of their profession is betrayed within each photo, the occasional hint of a khaki t-shirt perhaps, the close-cropped haircut, and then one reads the title and caption associated with each image, which simply states their name and length of time served in Iraq or Afghanistan. With this textual information, a secondary reading of the different facial expressions implies another perspective, a reassessment of their thoughts. Finding that they have been asked to adopt such an unnatural pose for a portrait, having submitted to a slow picture making process made with cumbersome apparatus, might give the individuals pause for reflection. Such reflection also extends to the viewer: we are encouraged to ask ourselves, ‘what could they be thinking?’ Are they recalling the recent past, perhaps lying in a similar position under fire? Having been asked to adopt this pose in more peaceful surroundings, did it remind them of the recent past? Did it reaffirm their survival? These images and their context inevitably ask the viewer a larger question as well: ‘is it possible to read past experiences – especially difficult, traumatic or uncomfortable experiences – from a portrait?’.

Opton wisely chooses not to offer a direct answer to this question. Instead, she merely presents us with images of fresh-faced young recruits, recently returned from a dangerous war zone and, through inference, asks us simply to look and decide for ourselves. The problem, of course, is that while capturing a face does tell us a story, it is never the whole narrative, nor is it necessarily a coherent narrative. What, then, are we to make of the title captions? To what extent are they meant to shape and direct our interpretations?

Whether we know it or not, our interpretations are not just guided by title captions – they are also guided by the tradition of portraiture itself. Portraits play a part in our lives from an early age, from the school photo right through to weddings, holidays and family reunions. However, frequently they are made in happier times. Opton explains that one mother asked for a copy of her son's portrait, specifically because all she possessed were photos from high points in her son's life. She knew he had suffered a great deal in Iraq, and she wanted a record of that time to make her family archive somehow complete.Footnote ¹ Yet again we confront the desire for pictures telling us the whole story.

While a mother's feelings about a portrait of her son are one thing, Opton's images also raise the question of how we view portraits of unfamiliar subjects: do we really look as closely or as patiently at a subject we do not immediately recognise? As artist and writer Jermy Millar has written, ‘cynically, we might say that “identity” is to portraiture as “place” is to landscape’.Footnote ² With this in mind, would the portraits of crying men, made by artist Sam Taylor-Wood, have received the same reception were the subjects not well known actors or celebrities.Footnote ³ For me, Taylor-Wood's project commented more on the pervasive nature of celebrity culture rather than notions of masculinity or the tradition of portraiture. Here, Opton has attempted to do the opposite of Taylor-Wood: she has chosen to raise the profile of the unknown soldier. She has taken a representative selection of the overlooked younger generation, sent to fight a war that is becoming less popular the longer it continues, and imbued them with a presence, even a degree of dignity.

Thinking about the figure of the unknown soldier, these images put one in mind of previous soldier portraits made during an earlier period when photographers were permitted greater access to the battlefield. A notable example would be the portrait ‘Shell shocked soldier, Hue, 1968’ taken by Don McCullin during the Vietnam War.Footnote ⁴ Occasionally the extended caption appears, which informs us that the subject sits awaiting withdrawal from the frontline following the assault on Hue. Without this anchor, it is possible to read the slightly upward looking gaze of McCullin's soldier differently: is he attending a religious service, looking on as the company Chaplain blesses troops before an impending assault? With the caption in place, the soldier is immediately identified as a casualty of war: we are drawn to questions of post traumatic stress disorder and the lamentable ‘thousand yard stare’ – empty eyes focussed nowhere in particular, always in the middle distance, possibly raking over vivid nightmares from the recent past. What makes McCullin's portrait so compelling is that it forces the viewer to confront not only the consequences of war, but the possibility that war has no redemption.

Those kind of soldier portraits were easier to capture, of course, before photographers were corralled into pools or ‘embedded’ alongside military minders. Opton's ‘Soldier’ is one inventive example of how an artist has responded to military censorship by producing a challenging group of images that exist in conversation with an earlier less-censored tradition of soldier photography. Created at a time when imagery from the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan are frequently negative or portray an absence of humanity (for example, the Abu Graib images), this intriguing series perhaps offers us an insight into how soldiers live with their war experiences once they return home.