US photographer captures amputee veterans posing nude while proudly revealing their injuries
A Los Angeles based photographer has shown wounded veterans in a different light.
Instead of taking sorrowful portraits, he’s zoomed in on their strength and sexuality.
Michael Stokes is a fitness photographer who is raising money via Kickstarter to publish a book of powerful photographs featuring 14 US Army, Navy and Marine Corp veterans of the Iraq War, Gulf War, and War in Afghanistan.
Mr Stokes told Huffington Post he was inspired to start the project two years ago, when he met Alex Minsky, a soldier wounded in Afghanistan.
Minsky got him thinking about different ways to approach a portrait of an amputee.
"I had already studied as many amputee photos that I could find. I noticed that most of them emphasised the lost limb, and that the mood was often sorrowful," he told the Huffington Post.
"That was not the vibe I was getting from him, so I decided to simply photograph him as if he were not an amputee, photograph him exactly the same way I would any of my fitness models."
Minsky has since found his own fame as a model and Mr Stokes has gone on to take photos of amputees and others wounded during war.
So far, he has raised over US$260,000 on Kickstarter to help with the publication of two large-scale coffee table books of his work - titled Exhibition and Always Loyal.
"Some people will say to me 'Oh, this is really helpful to [the veterans'] self-esteem,' or, 'You're making them feel like men again,'" Stokes said.
"...The response I have to that is that these guys have come to me very healed and ready to take the world on. I'm not giving them back their confidence. They already have it."
To see more of Michael Stokes’ work visit his Facebook.
