Letters Home (2025 +)

My father served in the 1st Ordnance MM Company attached to the 328th Ordinance Battalion during the Korean War. 1951-52. He was assigned to the tank maintenance division stationed about 26 miles north of the 38th parallel. He rarely ever spoke about his service in Korea, except to remember that the winters were brutally cold. Raised in Houston, TX, working in the open cold and snow would have been a difficult adjustment for him.

He was in the process of scanning his old home slides when I saw the slides he took while in Korea. I can’t say if this was the first time I had seen these but I requested custody of these when he was finished. I loved these slides as they shed a light on on his time of service but also because he recorded his memories of his service to share with his mother, father, and fiancé, my mother, upon return. The Kodachrome slides impart a feeling of nostalgia to his images.

It was not until both he and mom passed that we found letters written to my mother while he was in Korea. Full of details about his duties and a longing to return to her, these letters exposed their earliest sentiments to each other. Her letters to him had to be destroyed before returning home, as revealed in one of his letters. His letters were written on airmail paper, also known as army onion skin paper, which is a thin, strong translucent paper. Combined with Daddy’s beautiful penmanship, they are precious to hold.

With the exception of ‘From Beginning to End’, I assigned Dad’s voice to the men in his unit. Beginning with the text, I overlaid an image that spoke to the moment. All the men in the bunks, dreamed of their ‘Darling’ back home, hoping for correspondence and describing their day.

Prints.

Letters are printed on Awagami Murakumo Kozo paper, a thin strong translucent paper reminiscent of Dad’s airmail letters.
Sizes 30” x 20” and 16” x 24”.

‘From Beginning to End’ is printed on Canson Infinity Rag and mounted to aluminum substrate.
size 40” x 30”