Stephen Warner, a 1968 graduate of Gettysburg College, was killed in action just shy of eleven months after being drafted in the Vietnam War.(1) Assigned to the public relations staff of Army HQ, Warner’s photographs show a more personal side
of the soldiers he encountered, as his subjects are often resting, posing for a portrait, or performing their daily Army duties.(2) This tendency toward photographing noncombative scenes differentiates Warner’s photographs from many Vietnam War photojournalists, many of whom photographed the brutality of the war in an antiwar effort. Warner, too, was decidedly antiwar and even traveled to Washington, D.C., with fellow Gettysburg College students in October 1967 to participate in a huge antiwar march on the Pentagon.(3) His photographs underscore the brutality of war by capturing the humanity of the soldiers.

Warner believed that the U.S. Army devalued the individual, leading him to make individual portraits of many of the soldiers he met. He also sympathetically depicted Vietnamese villagers, and many of the subjects are engaged in physical labor, such as driving oxen or preparing a meal. Photographs of soldiers and the locals have been included in this exhibition for comparison, as well as one photograph where the viewer can clearly discern the tense relationship between the soldiers and the Vietnamese people. Here, a group of five U.S. soldiers walk past a group of Vietnamese men, ranging in age. One of the most noticeable differences between the two groups of men is their physical build and the amount of clothing they wear. The American soldiers are significantly taller than the local men and fully clothed, providing a stark contrast to the physically slighter Vietnamese men. The American soldiers also carry large weapons and technology and walk by the Vietnamese men without seemingly engaging them.

Another one of Warner’s photo- graphs depicts a resting soldier reclining in a small hammock in the dense Vietnamese jungle. The bright red markings of Warner’s pen disrupt the seemingly insignificant nap of the soldier; “Help!” leaps off of the page at the viewer. As the other markings appear to be standard edits for postproduction, the word “Help!” sets this photograph apart from dozens of other photographs with similar post-production markings. While the red “Help!” was directed at Warner’s photo editor, when taken out of context the word conveys the implicit danger of the War more generally. Without this information, the word then appears to be directed at the viewer of the photograph, implying a sense of responsibility and immediately creating a connection between the photograph and the viewer. The photograph also highlights a state of incongruity between the relaxed body in the hammock and the exclamation in red.

In Warner’s photograph of soldiers in their barracks, five men sit around a table eating and writing letters. Though they appear relaxed and safe during this brief respite from combat, the threat of the active warzone lurks beyond the frame. Therefore, a body in conflict is not always depicted in active warfare, but might often more obliquely refer to the dangerous situation by way
of contrast. For example, Warner’s photograph of men relaxing in their barracks compares to USO performances during World War II; this contrast between R&R and active combat highlights the extreme juxtaposition of fighting and living. While the viewer cannot see the faces of the soldiers in this photograph, one is able to relentlessly scrutinize the young and exposed bodies of
the men and to imagine the fate of these soldiers.(4) With present-day knowledge of the high number of casualties in the Vietnam War, the viewer can assume that these men were traumatized by combat, or, like Warner, killed in action.(5)