Dolf's Blog
Integral thoughts about development, humanity, spirituality
RIP Christopher S. Frost
I have taken up photography more intensively in the past years and became member of a site called Deviantart. It is somewhat similar to other sites where people share their photography, although this one is oriented more generally to art and has, in my opinion, higher qualitative standards.
Deviantart has a daily returning series of acknowledgements of artistic submissions called "Daily Deviations" (DD). Yesterday, a DD was awarded to the following picture called It's Finally Over, depicting graduates of the Iraqi military academy. The picture was taken by a US Army officer stationed in Baghdad called Christopher Frost. Browsing the rest of his gallery, I was duly impressed by the way in which he showed a different side of what is happening in Iraq. A brighter side than the everyday reports of losses on the US or Iraqi side, the suicide bombings and general agony of a war that has now lasted more than five years. I am strongly opposed to that war in general, but found Chris' pictures eye-opening to an different aspect of it.
I was just about to leave a comment on his home page about this when my eye struck various messages of a few days ago that said that Chris had just been killed in a helicopter crash in Iraq, along with seven Iraqi soldiers. That fact, paired with the eye-opening quality of his pictures left an impression on me of confusion: gratitude for showing this different perspective of the Iraq war, disgust of the war itself and war in general, but also sadness and respect for this person who did what was right in his eyes and paid the highest price for it at age 24. Looking into his eyes on the picture of himself on his homepage left me speechless.
Rest in Peace, Christopher Frost.
