Wanted: Your photos from the front - Entertainment, Books - Army Times

Wanted: Your photos from the front

Jaeson Parsons is looking for a few good war zone photos.

The former soldier and his friends are compiling a book of graffiti and unconventional art from overseas seen through the eyes of service members. They’re hunting for a publisher and asking folks to submit their favorite images.

“Try to find the most strange pictures you can think of, the most heart-wrenching, gut-wrenching, funny, odd, in the weirdest places — places you think people would never write,” Parsons says. “And we’re desperately looking for local-national art.”

When he and his battle buddies dreamed up the book in 2006, Parsons was in Ramadi, Iraq, working as an Army combat medic with the 54th Engineer Battalion. In the midst of the dull, dirty and dangerous work of route clearance, they took notice of the graffiti, Iraqi and American, to “keep our mind off of, ‘Oh s---, I’m going to die,’” Parsons says.

Now out of the Army, the 32-year-old husband, father and college student in Clarksburg, W.Va., launched www.unconventionalmilitaryart.com in March with a friend from his old battalion, Jason Deckman. “It’s a lot different, these soldiers creating these images in war than at home. It’s so much more fresh, so much more raw. I think that’s really what’s going to appeal to people.”

Some of the most effective images are surprising or juxtapose the mundane with the harshness of war. One of Parsons’ favorites is a rusting, decommissioned tank with the words painted on it, “Happy Mother’s Day from Iraq.”

Parsons is asking service members to send their photos from the war zone. He said the final product will credit any service member who sends an image they use, as well as — when possible — credit to the person who created the art that was photographed.

Interested service members should take a look at the website to get an idea of what Parsons is after. Though he said he’s open to more latrine graffiti, he will not accept anything derogatory, and he’ll probably have to limit the obscene images.