Mostly, Heffernan says, her subjects were stoic, so she was particularly struck when, at the end of a particularly grueling tattoo session, McNamara burst into tears at his first glimpse of the image traced along his back. "The sessions [are] certainly a moment of reflection for them," Heffernan says.
McNamara says he'd begun thinking about the tattoo from the moment his friends were killed and did the design the next day. "I was close with all of them," he says. "I'd spent the previous 2 1/2 years, day in, day out, with them. The main reason I got it done was respect for what they did. I was close to not making it home. These were the ones that didn't."
A selection of Heffernan's photos -- 10 images of freshly etched memorial tattoos -- is collected in an exhibit, "The Soldier's Skin: An Endless Edition," currently on view at the Pasadena City College Art Gallery.
From simple to ornate, the tattoos -- a helmet atop a rifle, a necklace of dog tags -- pay tribute to fallen comrades from this war or wars past. Heffernan's work is an unexpected prism through which to view the "soldier's story." She wants viewers to slough off the layers of detachment that come from a steady barrage of war news and ultimately to confront discomfort.
And there it is -- all of it within arm's reach: The red, raw patches of distressed skin under ink, blood that mixes with the red and white of the Stars and Stripes, creating blunt, new narratives on skin. Making Heffernan's photolithographs that much more immediate is that the bulk of them are not displayed behind glass, nor do they hang on the wall. Copies of them lie, arranged in nearly 2-foot-tall stacks on the floor, and viewers are invited to take them. "The monument is like a skin that can be endlessly peeled off," Heffernan says.
Heffernan, an assistant professor of art, sculpture and photography, art history and visual arts at Occidental College, never saw her project as some sort of "war memorial," a term that suggests something static and removed. "Rather than universalizing" the experience of war, she says, "this is about the particular." She watches as students of various races, ages and levels of curiosity thread in and out the gallery. As they hover over shiny stacks, it's difficult not to make the association of mourners lingering over a casket.
