Label
John Lawrence Doyle was known for his lithographs reflecting his fascination with the human condition. For over a decade, Doyle studied ethnology and anthropology.
Directly after the end of the Vietnam War, and in anticipation of the U.S. Bicentennial in 1976, Doyle created a series of 11 lithographs - "Sharpshooters 76;" which presented soldiers from wars of America’s past in chronological order.
“I wanted to do something that people at the time didn’t particularly want to deal with — war. Particularly, coming so close to the end of the Vietnam era. Folks just sort of wanted to forget it. I also wanted to show that the history of this country is a rather bloody affair, a war every twenty years or so. Courageous no doubt, but dehumanizing nonetheless. This dehumanizing process is what I hoped to show through the evolution of the wars, from the somewhat gentlemanly conducted affair of the Revolution to the dehumanized slaughter of Vietnam.”
Later in the series comes "Sony War," a depiction of a television set showing American troops dropping bombs on Vietnam. The Vietnam War, or the “Television War,” was the first televised war in history. Doyle’s image explores how televising war idealizes and alters the way war is viewed.