A photobook by Kenny Bass
A Marine’s Disposable War — Photobook
Accepted digital book; hardcover in preparation
Fifteen photographs from one disposable camera carried by a young Marine infantryman in Iraq in 2003.
Reserve a signed copy — $65
The digital edition is complete. Signed hardcover copies are planned at $65, plus shipping and applicable tax. The physical edition is being prepared for proofing; no publication or shipping date is set.
Includes the complete digital/accessible edition, delivered promptly after payment.
Send an inquiry. Kenny confirms fulfillment and payment directly.
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Optional support helps cover upfront printing costs and wider publication. Each total includes one $65 signed copy; the balance supports publishing. Shipping and applicable tax are confirmed separately.
- $100 — Early Supporter
Early-supporter acknowledgment, if you choose.
- $250 — Project Supporter
Project acknowledgment, if you choose.
- $500 — Publishing Sponsor
Prominent publishing-support acknowledgment, if you choose.
- $1,000 — Founding Publishing Sponsor
Founding publishing-support acknowledgment, if you choose.
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Project statement
One camera. Fifteen photographs. A sequence made more than two decades later.
The photobook draws fifteen images from A Marine’s Disposable War, the larger photographic project made with one disposable camera Kenny Bass carried as a young Marine infantryman in Iraq in 2003. The photographs move through murals, work sites, improvised vehicles, resting Marines, weapons, industrial structures, damaged machinery, and artillery propellant cases. Their color, softness, flare, and uneven exposures belong to the original consumer camera and to the conditions in which it was used.
Bass returned to the photographs more than two decades later. The book does not try to summarize the war or turn the archive into an illustration of his biography. Its sequence builds meaning through recurrence: bodies inside systems, machinery in landscape, ordinary pauses beside instruments of force, and material before and after use. Isolated images can be read as incidents. In the book, they accumulate into a more unsettled account of proximity, participation, and what remains.
A Marine’s Disposable War is a 15-photograph body featuring Spent, 2026 Analog Sparks International Film Photography Awards Bronze Winner, Photojournalism / Conflict.
Selected sequence
Four photographs in their book order.
These photographs retain the same relative order they hold in the complete fifteen-image sequence. The digital companion opens the full sequence and its deeper interpretation.
Browse the sequence preview
Bass stands on the remains of a bunker destroyed in a fatal explosion and fires at two vehicles used to block the resulting fence breach, trying to disable both. Photograph by Jamie Herman.
Bass and Jones slept in this hallway for six to eight weeks while their unit protected the weapons-manufacturing complex. Photograph by Jamie Herman.
The abandoned tank was inoperable. Bass made the photograph from a Humvee during a counter-ambush patrol south of Baghdad.
Thousands of large artillery propellant cases recede toward the horizon. For Bass, Spent reaches beyond the field: ammunition, machinery, bodies, years and futures were spent.
Digital exhibition companion
All fifteen photographs, with room to go deeper.
The companion keeps each photograph primary while offering optional visual description, historical context, Kenny’s recollections, authorship, related photographs and technical detail. Nothing plays automatically, and every section remains available as text.
Each institutional acquisition includes configuration of a collection-specific accessible digital companion for the exact works selected and their installation order. Accessibility is not sold as a surcharge. Approved local context and wayfinding may be added without altering canonical artwork facts; physical signage, on-site integration, unusual platform work, or other new production may be scoped separately.
Exhibition and institutional introductions
Know where this work belongs?
Works are available individually, as a coordinated multi-work acquisition, or as a complete 15-photograph print suite. A complete-suite proposal may include a defined quantity of signed hardbound books. A collection-tailored version of the digital exhibition companion is included with an institutional acquisition. You can recommend the project without having to explain or represent it yourself.