Benjamin Busch in Iraq

''The Art in War'' Opens at UMUC, Draws National Attention

By Chip Cassano

A photo from the exhibit, entitled "Iraqi Children Meet the Marines."

A provocative exhibit of photographs by Benjamin Busch, a major in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, opened at UMUC January 7, 2005. The display, entitled “The Art in War,” is composed of images Busch took while deployed in Iraq in 2003 as commanding officer of Delta Company, 4th Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion.

The exhibit drew immediate and widespread attention from national and international media outlets, with stories by the Associated Press, the European and Middle East editions of Stars and Stripes, the Washington Post and Baltimore’s The Sun, and coverage on MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews, Fox’s Live with Tony Snow, FoxNews First, and others.

Educated as a studio artist at Vassar College and trained as a soldier by the Marines, Busch saw the Iraq conflict from a unique perspective. What struck him as profound, others might well have overlooked. Often his greatest challenge, though, was to capture an image without being overly intrusive.

“People take on different relationships to their environment when they feel that they are being observed,” Busch told one reporter, “and they discard a certain honesty when they are aware of the camera.” To guard against that, Busch often told village leaders that he needed photographs of something else—sewer pipes, for instance—while “accidentally” recording images of the people and architecture that caught his eye. The results are far from the ordinary—often startling or touching, sometimes heartbreaking, but never clichéd.

Busch left the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve in March 2004 to pursue an acting career. Recent credits include his current role as Officer Colicchio on HBO’s The Wire, as well as appearances on NBC’s The West Wing and Homicide, Life on the Street, among others. He was recalled to active duty in 2005 and redeployed to the Anbar Province, which includes the city of Fallujah. He’ll be taking his camera with him.

“The Art in War” is free and open to the public and is on display in the West Building lobby from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily through April 10, 2005.