Thomas Sanders: ‘Vietnam War Portraits’
SCAD photography professor Thomas Sanders is an award-winning photo documentarian and the author of Vietnam War Portraits: The Faces and Voices (Casemate Publishers, 2020). Sanders’ previous book, The Last Good War: The Faces and Voices of World War II (Random House, 2010) won “Non-Fiction Book of the Year: Editor’s Choice” from Forwards Review, making Sanders the youngest ever recipient of that award, at age 25.
Sanders has photographed over 1,500 veterans throughout his career, the largest compilation of veteran portraits worldwide according to CBS. His work has been showcased in the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery and the World War II Museum in New Orleans. Sanders is the grandson of Army World War II veteran and photographer Willis Sanders.
Thomas Sanders:
My journey as a photo documentarian began when I was 21. I had a college assignment to take a photo of a World War II veteran. That experience was powerful. The impact of the conversation was life changing. I can still hear his story. He stepped on a mine in the European theatre, and the resulting explosion tore his stomach open. He used his canteen belt to hold his guts inside his body as he continued fighting.
That conversation took place in 2005, over 60 years from the date he stepped on the mine, and yet we were both transported back to that moment when he was a young man, 5,000 miles from home.
I was honored to be in that moment with him, and understood how fortunate I was to be hearing his story and taking his photo. I decided to travel the country and photograph as many World War II veterans as I could. Belmont Village Senior Living discovered my project and decided to send me to all their communities around the country and photograph veterans living in their communities.
That allowed me to create enough material for my first book, The Last Good War: The Faces and Voices of World War II. That book’s success allowed me to continue telling and sharing these heroic stories.
Over time I became interested in the veterans of the Vietnam War, and was curious why those men and women didn’t get the same reception as World War II veterans. Seemingly, they didn’t come back as heroes, and I was drawn to that narrative and exploring the relationship between the World War II veterans and the Vietnam vets. In 2013 I started photographing Vietnam veterans for Vietnam War Portraits: The Faces and Voices.
Luckily, I was in San Jose, CA, the third largest Vietnamese community in the country, and home to a large number of Vietnam veterans. At the same time, I was working on my project, documentarian Ken Burns was working on The Vietnam War. I was able to meet Ken, and I photographed him as part of my book. His series was a pop culture hit, and really brought the plight and lives of these vets to the forefront in a way that had never happened before.
I wanted my book to tell the stories of everyone involved, vets, conscientious objectors, journalists who were on the ground, and Vietnamese immigrants. One of those stories is from a woman named Bic Truong. She was grateful for the U.S. forces, and believes she would have died at the hands of the opposition forces if not for our involvement.
I haven’t stopped taking photos of vets and I can’t imagine I ever will. Their stories are too important not to share, highlight, and preserve.
By Robert Almand
