pictures.

Meg Tucker visits her son’s grave in Madras, Oregon. Pfc. Thomas Tucker was killed during an insurgent attack while serving in Baghdad in 2006. He and another soldier were missing for three days before troops found his booby-trapped body. I photographed her about a year later as American troops were again searching for missing soldiers.

I hate this stuff. Go visit the family of some kid who got killed. It always feels horrible. This one was actually set up to be worse. The reason we went a year after his death was because the military had just released the report about what happened.

This turned out to be an amazing experience. I went out there with my friend and reporter Julie Sullivan. Meg had agreed to one photo and no interview. The family was extremely tired of the media. I made some portraits of her in a park and as she went to leave I watched Julie slowly start to connect with her as a mother. Over the course of the next 3 or 4 hours they talked about the intimate details of what it is like to lose a child in war. At the end of the day, Meg, asked us to come with her to visit her son.

Julie never wrote a story about Meg. She just did what was right. If there were more journalists like Julie we would not have the awful reputation that we do.

Along the same line of thought, check out this photo essay from my colleague, Jamie Francis. He writes, “News, by its nature, is reported on deadline, and for journalists, the funeral is often an ending. For the families of the dead, however, the funeral is just a beginning.”