What started as a simple homework assignment in his senior year at Cal Poly has blossomed into a full-scale, ongoing project for SJSU alumnus Tom Sanders. Sanders, who earned his MFA in Photography in 2014, photographs and creates films for a wide range of clients in the arts, education, and the corporate world, but he is best known for his series of photographs of United States veterans of World War II. Sanders has travelled to assisted-living homes all over the United States to capture these images, which are now preserved in permanent galleries and in his award-winning book, The Last Good War: The Faces and Voices of WWII.
Sanders was inspired to pursue this important project by his grandfather, who fought in World War II, and a neighbor who also was a WWII veteran. The men told highly detailed, almost gruesome stories of their war experiences that motivated Sanders to learn more about the breadth of sacrifices made by veterans of World War II. “None of [the veterans] think of themselves as heroes,” Sanders remarked. “These are people who have made huge sacrifices and been in stressful life or death situations.” The Last Good War preserves these veterans’ stories in pictures as well as print, and was named nonfiction book of the year in 2010 by the Forewords Review.
Sanders’ portrait series documents a history that is rapidly disappearing. “Many of these veterans are over 90 years old,” Sanders explained. “Sometimes the few minutes I spend photographing them is the last time I’ll see them.” Some veterans, he noted, pass away in the six weeks between the photography session and the opening of the show itself, which makes his efforts all the more poignant and timely.
Sanders is now expanding his photography project to include younger veterans of more recent wars. He will soon work with Swords to Ploughshares, a San Francisco based nonprofit that supports veterans in need, to photograph women who are veterans of the Iraq War. When asked about his success, Sanders says that success can come in many different forms, and that students “don’t need to go to an expensive art school to get a good art education.” Sanders’ photographs document the multitudinous ways human beings strive to succeed and help motivate his audience to pursue their own paths toward excellence.
For more information, and for a gallery of work, visit Tom Sanders’ website – http://tomsandersphoto.com/portfolio/
By Kaitlynn Magnuson
