Nina Berman’s show Purple Hearts – photographs depicting veterans of the war in Iraq – just closed at Jen Bekman. I didn’t make it to the show, but the images on the Jen Bekman website are disturbing and frightening, showing (barely) healed wounds and the aftereffects of being injured on the job. They make me think twice about complaining that my job or life is difficult. From Berman’s statement:

Meeting so many severely disabled young men and women was deeply disturbing to me. I felt complicit because they had fought in my name. And I felt the divide of privilege because I did not have to make a similar sacrifice.

Many of the images from this show are also on display at Der Spiegel, and they are accompanied with some explanatory text and brief quotations from the subjects.