Portraits of Courage - Vision of Vets
At Vision of Vets, we sit with veterans, look them in the eye, and make sure their stories don't disappear.
Portraits that see them. Videos that let you hear them. History preserved in their own words.
Vision of Vets founder, Bruce Roscoe
My father served in World War II. North Africa. Italy. He came home, built a life, raised a family, and he almost never talked about the war.
But every year on Veterans Day, without fail, he put on his US Army uniform and went to the commemorative events here in Prescott. He was so proud to have served his country. Not loud about it, not performative. Just steady, and sure, and present.
My dad in his WWII uniform on Veteran’s Day 2018
What he also did was photograph everything. He was an avid amateur photographer, and I grew up spending hours with his scrapbooks and slides. Images from places I had never been, from years that felt both close and impossibly distant. I didn't understand then exactly what I was absorbing. I understand it now. He knew that photographs hold something words alone cannot, that without the image, eventually the memory goes too.
My dad in Italy during WWII
I have been a photographer my whole adult life, and I have thought about that a lot.
History has always mattered to me the way it does when it lives in actual people rather than in textbooks. Growing up in Prescott, I eventually found my way to the archives at Sharlot Hall Museum, where I spent time learning firsthand how much disappears when a story goes unrecorded. A document, a photograph, a voice. Once it's gone, it is gone.
All of that, the photographs, the archives, the uniform on Veterans Day, the way history had always felt personal to me rather than distant, it was pointing somewhere. I just didn't know where yet. When fellow photographer Bruce Roscoe invited me to be a part of his non-profit organization, Vision of Vets, I recognized immediately what a natural fit it was. Storytelling portraits. Authentic historical voices preserved for our descendants. It was the work I had been shaped for without ever knowing it was out there waiting.
Vision of Vets is dedicated to preserving the oral and visual histories of US combat veterans. Bruce founded it after flying to Rhode Island to photograph his childhood friend Joe Rowe, who was dying of complications from Agent Orange exposure in Vietnam. On the flight home, Bruce had a vision. He would spend whatever time he had left doing this for as many veterans as he could reach. Professional portraits. Filmed interviews. Written narratives. All given to the veterans and their families at no cost, because these stories belong to them, and then to all of us.
I am now the President of Vision of Vets, a role Bruce entrusted to me. Jeff serves on the board as Treasurer, which is its own kind of statement about what this work has become for our family. We have documented veterans from thirteen different wars, from WWII forward through the most recent conflicts in the Middle East. One of the most significant was Roy Hawthorne, one of the only living Navajo Code Talkers at the time we photographed him. These are real people, and every single one of them has a story that the world needs and that time is actively working against.
the late Roy Hawthorne, Navaho Code Talker from WWII - portrait by Bruce Roscoe
That urgency is not rhetorical. The Greatest Generation is leaving us. Every day. The specific details of what they saw and did and survived go with them unless someone is in the room asking the questions and running the camera before it is too late.
The technology Vision of Vets uses makes the portraits genuinely interactive. You download the free Interactive Content app, point your phone at one of our portraits, and the photograph comes alive. The veteran begins to speak. Their story, in their own voice, right there on the wall. When we first started using augmented reality this way, I remember thinking about my father's slides. How different it would have been to point a phone at his photograph and hear him tell me what those years were actually like. I still think about that.
This spring, we opened an exhibit at Sharlot Hall Museum, right here in Prescott. Twelve of our portraits now hang in the Liese and Rosenblatt Gallery in the Archive Building permanently. Each one interactive, each one carrying a veteran's voice. Walking through that gallery is something I cannot quite describe so I will just say this: go. If you are local, go. Bring someone who has never thought much about our veterans and the sacrifices they willingly made for us. Experience their stories, leave with a new understanding.
I also had the chance recently to sit down with Stuart Rosebrook for his Arizona Roundup podcast, recorded at Sharlot Hall. We talked for nearly an hour about where this work came from, what drives it, and why it matters right now. You can find that conversation here.
My father is gone. I cannot go back and ask him what it was like to be twenty-something years old in North Africa and Italy, carrying a camera and serving his country. I cannot ask him what he thought about on those Veterans Days in Prescott, standing at attention in that uniform while the rest of us watched. I know what he thought when he died, because we buried him in it, medals and all. He never stopped being proud of what he gave.
That window is closed for me. What I can do is make sure it does not close for everyone else before we get there.
If you want to learn more about Vision of Vets or support the work, visit visionofvets.org.