Landmines

Photo & Text by Ryan Libre

War is full of uncertainties, one of the unfortunate certainties is a flow of young men into the amputation field hospital.

Landmines feature story

Not all landmines are made alike, The Burmese made landmines deliver a blunt focused blow that often means amputation or death. The Kachin self-made landmines delivers shrapnel widely, that injures more superficial wounds over a large area.

The emotional pain of hearing your own leg being sawed off with a handsaw, is a pain no medicine can numb or heal. Sadly after more then a year of physical recovery and making prosthetic limbs, too many of these soldiers succumb to the emotional damage and end their own lives

Many soldiers who have already been amputated try to sleep as a new victim arrives at the KIA military hospital

worried face of a new landmine victim at the KIA military hospital

Ryan spends a lot of time getting to know his subjects and very little time post-processing. He went AWOL from the US Army as a teenager and went on to get a degree in Peace Studies. Ryan has held solo exhibitions at the Nikon Salons in Tokyo and Osaka, The Fuji Film Salon, The foreign correspondents Club of Thailand, The Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan and more.

In addition to his own work and exhibitions, Ryan founded and directs Documentary Arts Asia, Sakse Agency, Everyday Kachin, the Naw Ming Award and many other projects. Ryan has called Asia home for nearly 2 decades and he works primarily on self-assigned projects