[Art_beyond_sight_learning_tools] Iraq vet pursues photography

Sat Oct 29 14:48:20 CDT 2005

Hello,
An article from the AP about an Iraq vet who was
blinded in one eye now pursuing photography in the
U.S.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/IRAQ_A_WOUNDED_LIFE_IQ1?SITE=NCKIN&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&SECTION=HOME

Oct 29, 2:09 PM EDT

Vet Who Photographed Iraq Loses Some Sight 

By ANTONIO CASTANEDA 
Associated Press Writer

OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) -- Army Sgt. Walt Gaya spent his
time in Iraq peering - through the scope of his sniper
rifle and through the lens of his camera, snapping
black-and-white pictures of his unit and of life in
the turbulent city of Mosul.

Becoming a professional photographer was his dream.
Losing his sight was his nightmare, which he sometimes
mentioned in long-distance phone calls to his wife,
Jessica, in Washington.

Then on a routine patrol last July in Mosul, with his
trusty Leica wedged among the gear in his backpack, a
roadside bomb ripped open the hull of Gaya's Stryker
combat vehicle, wounding all nine men inside.

Gaya felt his leg throbbing as he helped the others
escape the 19-ton vehicle. Shrapnel had torn through
the leg and shredded a knee ligament.

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Then he felt a sharp pain in his left eye. His vision
began to blur.

While attention has focused on the more than 2,000
American soldiers who have died in Iraq since the U.S.
invasion in March 2003, another 16,000 have been
wounded, nearly half so severely they didn't return to
duty. Their injuries have altered their lives, in some
cases leaving hopes and plans in tatters - or futures
uncertain like Gaya's.

Evacuated back to a U.S. base in Germany and then to
the United States, Gaya had to leave behind his
camera, still tucked in a backpack inside the crippled
vehicle on a Mosul street.

In the first moments after the explosion, Gaya was
just grateful to be alive. He had survived an earlier
roadside bombing with burns on his lower back and some
hearing loss.

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Iraq

But then, with each painful blink as he helped set up
a security perimeter around his disabled vehicle, his
mind raced with fears that the blurred vision would
never clear.

Gaya, 30, had pursued his passion for photography in
Iraq not only to relax but also to help document life
in a country in turmoil.

"It meant so much to me. Photography was one of the
other things that I had besides doing my job over
there," Gaya said as his two children, Corina, 4, and
Julian, 2, romped around their home. "Some people
don't ever find what they want to do. But for me
everything is different when I grab that camera."

On one earlier mission, a roadside bomb had exploded
near his vehicle, wounding an Iraqi child. Gaya
snapped a photo of a soldier cradling the child, and
trying to hush away his tears.

"He was comforting him, just like my mom would when I
was a kid," said Gaya.

Other photos show Gaya's buddies on guard, inside
buildings with walls pocked by mortar rounds, rifles
at the ready. In one shot, a helicopter hovers above a
soldier keeping watch on a rooftop, providing security
as units on the ground search the neighborhood.

"I thought it was an interesting photo just because of
the vast emptiness of the background. And as the bird
was flying by it almost looks like an insect that
could sting you at any moment if you do the wrong
thing," he said, laughing quietly at the memory.

Gaya, dark-eyed and gravel-voiced, has a photographic
style that captures the stark loneliness of war, the
endless hours of watching and waiting for something to
happen.

"I think combat should be photographed in black and
white and it should be grainy because that's the way I
saw it," he said. It's a vision shared by his fellow
soldiers.

"I showed one of these photographs to my friend and he
looked at it and he said, 'You know, when I look at
these photographs that's pretty much how I remember
Iraq - black and white and grainy. I don't remember
the golden sunsets or any of the brown from the
sand.'"

Gaya is proud of his unit - the 1st Battalion, 24th
Infantry Regiment based at Fort Lewis - and of its
success in curbing insurgent attacks in western Mosul,
the Sunni Arab part of the city where militants were
most active. He served about eight months in Iraq.

But it came at a high price. Several of his friends
were killed, including Sgt. Benjamin Morton of Wright,
Kan., who shared his love for photography.

"I'm proud to have served with the unit," Gaya said.
"We helped that city a lot."

After the explosion, doctors stitched up Gaya's left
eye, which had been pierced by a bomb fragment. He was
fortunate, they told him, that his eye had not lost
all its internal fluid, which likely would have led to
its permanent collapse.

But the vision remains impaired - he can only make out
shapes and light and billboard-size letters, he said.
At this point, Gaya is considering a cornea
transplant.

The wound has turned his life upside down.

When Gaya returned to Fort Lewis, he joined other
injured soldiers assigned to odd jobs around the base.
With his impaired vision, his days as a sniper were
over.

Some days he would help move furniture around; other
times he would prepare barracks for the return of the
battalion.

The attack had also upturned other parts of his life.
The Argentina-born immigrant, who moved to the United
States as a child, was injured just eight days before
he was to be sworn in as a U.S. citizen in a ceremony
in Iraq.

Now, he's in a bureaucratic black hole: Federal
immigration officials wouldn't renew his permanent
resident card or tell him when he could reschedule the
swearing-in ceremony. No one at the local U.S.
Citizenship and Immigration Services office could tell
him what to do next to get his citizenship papers, or
even how to renew his immigration documents.

One day, as he was moving furniture at Fort Lewis, he
found a copy of an old newspaper with a photograph of
soldiers at the citizenship ceremony in Iraq that he
had missed.

He tossed it aside and kept working.

After several surgeries and countless doctor's visits,
the vision in Gaya's left eye still is blurry and
distorted, as if he's opening his eyes underwater.

"Now that I have all this scar tissue built up, it's
very difficult to see because the light is being
refracted," he said.

But his right eye is uninjured, and Gaya believes he
can still shoot pictures despite a loss of peripheral
vision.

"I don't think it hindered my passion for photography
one bit," he said. "I've always been not much of a
quitter kind of guy. Did it wear on me? It did at
first a little bit. But I primarily use my right eye,
so by no means is it going to slow me down at all -
ever."

Lt. Col. Erik Kurilla, Gaya's commanding officer who
also returned to Fort Lewis after being wounded in
Mosul, called Gaya a "quiet professional. He's the
type of soldier that every commander wished he had a
hundred of."

Gaya says he won't let his injury define his life. On
his lunch breaks at Fort Lewis, he uses a camera he
bought from a pawn shop, venturing into the morning
mist to snap shots of soldiers training.

His old Leica was retrieved from the blast site in
Iraq, but he chuckles when he thinks of its battered
condition. He still takes black and white shots, but
now he sometimes uses color film to take pictures of
his children.

Gaya's enlistment is up next spring, and he's busy
compiling a portfolio of his photographic work. He
hopes news agencies or magazines will look past the
dark patch he wears over his left eye and hire him as
a photographer.

"I feel like I'm going to have to work extra hard to
demonstrate that it's not going to be a problem," he
said. "I never even considered stopping. It's not me
to just quit."

---

EDITOR'S NOTE - Antonio Castaneda is an AP
correspondent covering the war in Iraq. He traveled to
Olympia, Wash., to report this story.

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