Q. & A. with Joel van Houdt, Afghanistan-Based Photographer

The portraits were part of the assignment that photo editor Joanna Milter sent me on the road with. I liked the idea: these Marines had been living and fighting on the often forgotten front line of this war, and I thought that photographing their faces, as opposed to their bodies in action, would remind us that actual people, in this case young Americans, are putting their lives at risk.