Pressing Memories Of War

Scissors slice through an Iraqi war veteran's sweat-stained uniform. They're shaping a second incarnation for the clothing. The fabric, will be shredded and mulched along with the miniscule grains of sand from the Gulf that still cling to the fibers. It will then be transformed into something completely and utterly contrary to its previous identity – paper for creative expression.

Drew Cameron, a vet with one heck of a poetic streak came up with the idea. He's converted old uniforms for dozens of war vets from conflict areas around the world, touching regular people like us with this utterly unique transformational experience called the Combat Paper Project.

The Iowa native tells the Christian Science Monitor (CSM) that he initially had a friend take photos of him cutting his own uniform -- images he would show to people as he traveled, along with the paper he made from his fatigues. (He learned the paper-making at a worshop in Burlington while serving in the National Guard in Vermont.)Eventually, he attracted the interest of other vets and started doing workshops with them. The vets write poetry or imprint the paper they make with self-portraits.

"When someone decides to take that act – to take their uniform and deconstruct it and turn it into paper – they're there and ready to share, so it becomes this phenomenally honest space," Cameron says.

One fellow war vet, Jennifer Pacanowski attended Cameron's workshop during a gathering of war veteran writers in Massachusetts. Not completely taken by the idea at first, the therapeutic nature of the process eventually drew her in.

"I just started cutting my uniform up, and before I knew it, I was sweating and my hand was bleeding," she says in a phone interview with the CSM. "It was so satisfying, I can't even describe it... It's so freeing, like just destroying a really bad memory."

On the original paper, made from Cameron's own uniform -- the one that precipitated this extraordinary project -- he applied the photos documenting his own uniform's destruction. To these he's added a poem that is a sort of letter to the Iraqi people. He's given it the title, "You are Not My Enemy."

Photos courtesy the Combat Paper Project.