Early in 1991, Time magazine sent Kenneth Jarecke to cover the Persian Gulf War. He was assigned to a military press pool. On February 28, 1991, their van came upon the wreckage of a destroyed military convoy on Highway 80. The Iraqi Army was in retreat from Kuwait when it was attacked by Coalition Air Forces and compressed itself into a seven-mile traffic jam. Jarecke had a few short minutes to photograph the scene, which included this burned figure framed by an empty windshield. The soldier was frozen in position when an explosion engulfed his truck. Jarecke sent the image to New York where it was blocked from publication by an Associated Press editor. It appeared in Europe, however, and Jarecke eventually received a Pulitzer Prize nomination. “If we’re big enough to fight a war,” he wrote, “we should be big enough to look at it.”

from Touchstones of the Twentieth Century: A History of Photography at the University of Notre Dame (exhibition, 2020-21)