Snapshots Sent Home
SNAPSHOTS SENT HOME
from Afghanistan, Iraq, Ukraine––A Memoir
(Elva Resa Publishing, Feb 20, 2024)
RESOURCES
Front Cover / Back Cover / Flyer
Like many post-9/11 combat veterans, Blatty struggled to regain her sense of purpose in the first years returning home from Afghanistan and Iraq. In 2018, a chance encounter brought her to Ukraine, drawn in by the familiarity of war and those who serve in wars. Over five years, Blatty captured oral history and photographed, often in portrait, a tribe of revolutionaries, the 2014 Donbas volunteer soldiers. As she embedded with them on the front line in bunkers and forests, and in Kyiv flats, Blatty’s story began to blend with theirs in a universal bond of combat veterans, compelling her to stay as a new war began.
Blatty’s Frontline/Peace Life collection, featuring the portraits and recorded stories of Ukraine’s 2014 revolutionaries, exhibited in Chicago and New York City in 2019-2020 to bring attention to the war in eastern Ukraine, and was scheduled to open in Kyiv in March 2022 but was canceled due to the invasion. The exhibit now serves as a memorial tribute to many who volunteered once again and died defending Ukraine. Blatty’s memoir, Snapshots Sent Home, interweaves her own experiences in three different wars with her reflections on patriotism, heroism, photography, community, and the people along the way who shaped her view of what it means to be free.
“… an intimate, finely-written memoir about the truths and realities shared by soldiers everywhere. … Blatty ruminates about the nature of comradeship, patriotism, longing, loss, life and death; memory and love. … this devastatingly moving book … should be read by anyone who cares about what we do on history’s battlefields, and about how we process what we have done afterwards. … will stay on in readers’ minds for a long time to come.”
—Jon Lee Anderson, staff writer, The New Yorker; author of Che Guevara and The Fall of Baghdad
“ … a sweeping and illuminating account … powerful, engaging narrative … kaleidoscopic portrait of her experiences, and those of the people she meets and grows close with along the way. … Blatty shares her and their stories with immediacy, honesty, and depth. … a sense of place and people that is usually only arrived at by being there; the men and women who people this book are richly and vividly drawn, like characters in a good novel. … challenging, revelatory, and important … This book is a rare and moving testament to the ties that bind those who experience war and its ongoing, lasting effects.”
—Alexa Dilworth, former publishing director, Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University
“Through a series of dispatches, across several frontlines … Blatty weaves a wholly unique and timely account of life during wartime on Ukraine’s eastern front. … Under the blanket of slow terror … Blatty finds love on the other end of her camera lens, and perhaps, part of herself. …”
—James McGrath, former bureau chief, Gamma Presse
“Vivid, bewildering, and brutally honest … There’s a cinematic quality to her writing that sears these episodes into your memory, and leaves you with a renewed appreciation of our common humanity.
—Marilyn Terrell, former chief researcher, National Geographic Traveler magazine