This book was published by Duke University Press and was made possible when William Eggleston selected it to win the Center for Documentary Studies/Honickman First Book Prize; a weighty inheritance but one that Benjamin Lowy deserves.

It's divided into two halves, Iraq Perspectives I: Windows, and Iraq Perspectives II: Night Vision, both of which reflect American soldiers' limited view of Iraq. Whether looking out of armoured car windows or through green-tinted night-vision goggles, the military has little opportunity to connect with the local people or everyday life, as Lowy's shots make chillingly clear.

When Eggleston selected the work, he said: "Benjamin's work is an opportunity to see as an American soldier sees when in Iraq-nobody's ever shown that, especially through night vision goggles."

Lowy started working on Perspectives in 2005, when he was "being driven from an assignment-an endeavor that took two cars and four heavily armed Iraqi guards," he said, earlier in the year. "Iraq was a land of blast walls and barbed wire fences. I made my first image of a concrete blast wall through the window of my armored car that day. My only view of Iraq was through inches-thick bulletproof glass."

He added: "The images are not intimate. Metaphorically speaking, the windows represent a barrier that impedes dialogue. The pictures show a fragment of Iraqi daily life taken by a transient passenger in a Humvee; yet they are a window to a world where work, play, tension, grief, survival, and everything in between is as familiar as the events of our own lives."

Lowy also photographed Iraq through military-issued night vision goggles, which were "firmly attached to his camera by means of duct tape, dental floss, and occasionally, chewing gum," says the photographer. The goal, he explains, was to reveal a more menacing nocturnal version of Iraq's abandoned streets, cowering civilians, and anxious soldiers.

The book is available at Duke University Press.

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