Van Agtmael says, “this is how I saw America’s wars from 2006-2013. I was scared of war but also comfortable in it. I had felt it in me from the beginning of my consciousness. I didn’t know what form it would take, but I always knew I would go.”

“I hope the act of making this book does not romanticize violence. When I was younger I was seduced by images of war as much as I was repulsed by them. Despite all the death and confusion and isolation and impotence I hope these pictures emit, I know they can only be a slender document. There are so many simultaneous existences and we can only be present in one. For every story that is recorded there are nearly infinite ones we’ll never know. The real weight of destruction is still happening constantly in anonymity across Iraq and Afghanistan and America, in endless repetition of all that has come before.

If I found any truth in war, I found that in the end everyone has their own truth.”