Portraits of U.S. Marines transform Carolina’s Battle Park
Carolina launches arts initiative supporting military-affiliated communities with Garmsir Marines photography exhibition.
A photography exhibition featuring photographs of 10 U.S. Marines transform Battle Park on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus into a forest of black-and-white portraits. The exhibition, Garmsir Marines, is by internationally-renowned conflict photographer Louie Palu and depicts 10 marines from the 1st Battalion, 6th Marines (1/6), currently based at Camp Lejeune. Palu took the photographs in 2008 at a small combat outpost in Garmsir District in Helmand Province, Afghanistan.
“I feel like my role in the world is to put a human face to statistics and issues,” Palu said. “I wanted these photographs to be personal, so you know who they are, their age and where they were from. I also wanted portraits that looked at you and were confrontational, so you had to face them.”
Co-presented by UNC’s Arts Everywhere and the Click! Photography Festival, Garmsir Marines is the inaugural program in a larger Arts Everywhere initiative to support military-affiliated communities through the arts.
