WARD & KWESKIN: nothing gold can stay
18 MAY - 1 JUNE, 2019
Artist Statement
This series of images of young Marines who are stationed at Camp Pendleton, California were made in the parking lot of a barbershop, where the young men and women get their Sunday regulation haircuts.
The photographers’ view of the individuals is spare, direct and descriptive as only the medium of photography can render. Ward and Kweskin were struck by a juxtaposition: the tenderness and vulnerability in the eyes of these young Marines with the strength and steely resolve their transformative training had provided them.
Their expressions are a reminder that youth has a termination date. What would mark that? How would their experience in the Corps affect who they would become in the future? And who would be there to embrace them when they returned?
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing Gold Can Stay
-Robert Frost