They Dropped Like Flakes, They Dropped Like Stars
Suicide among U.S. military veterans has become one of the most urgent and tragic legacies of America’s recent wars. Those living with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are particularly vulnerable, often carrying the psychological weight of combat long after returning home. According to data from the Department of Veterans Affairs, in 2014 alone, more than 7,400 veterans died by suicide, an average of twenty lives lost each day. In many military units, more soldiers were lost to suicide after deployment than were killed in combat itself. These deaths often occur in isolation, folded into the ordinary rhythms of civilian life and largely absent from public view.
They Dropped Like Flakes, They Dropped Like Stars, is PAUL SEAWRIGHT’S photographic project that draws attention to this ongoing loss. The work presents the American landscape as a dispersed battlefield. Seawright photographs quiet, unremarkable sites where veterans have taken their own lives. Empty roadsides, wooded clearings, and open land replace traditional images of war, emphasizing absence, silence, and erasure. Seawright transforms familiar spaces into markers of loss.
The project’s title refers to a poem by Emily Dickinson, in which death falls repeatedly and almost gently, “like flakes” or “like stars.” The metaphor evokes the quiet repetition of loss, echoing how veteran suicide continues; persistent, isolated, and too often unseen.
“They dropped like flakes, they dropped like stars,
Like petals from a rose,
When suddenly across the June
A wind with fingers goes.
They perished in the seamless grass,—
No eye could find the place;
But God on his repealless list
Can summon every face.”
