Veteran showcases veterans in photography project

Local veteran Jason Geer is showcasing a photography project featuring his fellow veterans this Veterans Day, in an effort to showcase their humanity and talents to the community.

The showcase will be featured at Crawford Distillery next Friday, Veterans Day.

Geer, who served in the U.S. Navy as an electronics technician from 1990 to 1994, said the project features portrait photos of veterans doing the things that make them passionate, photos that will be on display at Crawford from 3-8 p.m. that day.

He said he wanted to do something about local veterans that doesn’t focus on things like homelessness, post-traumatic-stress disorder or addiction, which he feels a lot of discourse about veterans gravitates to.

He said these are really important issues, and he’s not trying to diminish them, but he often feels like they drown out conversation about all the great things veterans do for their communities and themselves, their talents, their interests, the things that make them human and often inspiring to others.

“I think we, as people, need to be celebrated more, instead of having labels put on us,” he said.

Geer said he came up with the idea for the project more than a year ago, and talked about it to some of his friends who are veterans, who liked the idea.

He said he spoke to members of Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 497, and a PTSD support group, and, from there, the project worked through word of mouth.

He said he’d talk to a few veterans and they would recommend him to others they know until he had a collection of 28 photos.

Geer said he wanted to refrain from using social media, keeping contacts with veterans more personal.

He said many of his fellow veterans tend to be private people, and he thought it would be better to talk to them one on one instead of making a request over social media, sitting down with them individually sometimes multiple time until they were comfortable with participating in the project before they set up specifics.

Geer said the photos are of veterans doing the things that make them passionate, whether that’s participating in a rodeo, riding a motorcycle or whatever that happens to be.

He said he originally thought of having each photo feature one piece of military memorabilia from the veteran’s time serving, but often the younger veterans had too much to choose from, and the older ones had trouble finding anything left, so he made that optional, since it was becoming a barrier.

He said the collection of photos represents a lot of veterans baring their souls and allowing others to see into their lives in an intimate way, and the fact that so many were willing to allow him to take these photos is an honor.

“To give me that kind of access to their lives, I felt very privileged,” he said.

Geer said he’s not sure how far-reaching the effects of the project will be, but he’s hoping it offers people a different perception toward veterans, that they can be inspiring and uplifting.

“I want people to be able to look at the picture and piece the puzzle together,” he said. “ ... I want people to connect with the people in the picture.”

The showing of the project will be at Crawford Distillery, which is not only veteran-owned but also the former location of the local VFW Club, which Geer said seemed fitting.

He said the project will be displayed on the walls of the distillery from 3 to 8 p.m. Veterans day with himself and some of the participants in the project at the showcase.

He said he’ll give an artist’s statement to talk about the process of the project and answer questions, but he’ll be happy to talk about it with people one-on-one as well.

He said Crawford offered to donate $1 of every drink sold to a local veteran-focused project, though they haven’t made a final decision on which one.

“I’m nervous about the show but I’m so excited, too,” Geer said.

He said he’d love to continue doing the project, but it has been completely self-funded and is starting to become difficult to keep paying for, so he’s looking into grant funding or something like that to help him continue.

“I would love to keep doing this,” he said.

Regardless of how the presentation goes, he said, or what happens in the future, he feels the project has already been very successful.

“I had no idea how far this would go or where I would end up … and it evolved into something I never anticipated,” Geer said.