Scenes of the Journey Home
The Odyssey Project gives veterans the chance to use photography as a way of exploring and explaining the journey home from war
By Mike Costanza
Navy veteran Michael Thaxton is particularly happy with a photo he took of a young girl who donned a sailor’s hat and a tiny American flag to attend a Rochester parade.
“I just loved the way she looked,” the 59-year-old Rochester resident said. “It’s the next generation being patriotic.”
Thaxton captured the girl’s image while participating in a 12-week photography workshop that was given by The Odyssey Project.
The project is the brainchild of Buffalo-based professional photojournalist Brendan Bannon. Bannon created it primarily for combat veterans and those who have suffered sexual assault or threatening sexual harassment while serving their country in uniform, or MST (military sexual trauma).
“The purpose is to give veterans the opportunity to use photography as a way of exploring and explaining the journey home from war,” Bannon said.
Those who sign up for one of The Odyssey Project’s workshops are given Canon DSLR (digital single-lens reflex) cameras and attend a three-day retreat. They then take photography classes once a week for three months.
“One of the beautiful things about the program is we meet under the guise or auspices of photography, but what we talk about is the life that’s shown in those pictures,” Bannon said.
Vets who complete the workshop get to keep the cameras. Though The Odyssey Project was created to serve combat veterans and those who have suffered MST, Bannon says its entrance requirements are flexible. For example, The Odyssey Project welcomes nurses who used their time in uniform to care for combat vets. Canon Professional Services donates the cameras.
Bannon has never served in the military, but came up with the idea of The Odyssey Project in part because of a friend, the late Joe Orffeo, a Buffalo-based painter who’d piloted amphibious landing craft in the Pacific during World War II. When Bannon became clinically depressed in his late 20s, Orffeo used the knowledge he’d gained by working through that traumatic experience to help the younger man take on his difficulties through art.
“He leaned on his experiences as a combat veteran and the trauma that he endured and the way he engaged art to deal with that to kind of encourage me on an artistic path as a way of engaging and working through the challenges that I faced,” Bannon said.
Bannon subsequently became a professional photographer and has worked all over the world. For Do You See What I See, a project he undertook in partnership with UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, he traveled to Lebanon and Jordan to give photography workshops to children and youth who had been forced to flee war-torn Syria. The children then shared their stories with the public through photos and texts. The results have been featured in newspapers, magazines and exhibitions worldwide.
In 2019, Bannon set out to give veterans the chance to express themselves photographically. In partnership with the Josephine Herrick Project, the CEPA Gallery, The Harlem, Queens and Buffalo Vet Centers and Higher Ground, he helped establish branches of The Odyssey Project in Buffalo and New York City.
Late last year, Rochester’s Flower City Arts Center hosted 75 photographers who’d participated in the project in the hope of drumming up support for starting a local branch. From Nov. 1 through Dec. 21, the walls of the center’s Sunken & Community Darkroom Galleries bore scenes from civilian life or from the veterans’ inner landscapes.
Chris Cilento’s photos were among them. During 26 years in the US Army he had multiple combat deployments, the last one in Afghanistan.
“I lost a good friend over there and that really stuck with me,” the 51-year-old Spencerport resident said. “I still have trouble with that even now, pushing 13 years later.”
Cilento’s time in the Army left him with chronic pain and PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). Photography became part of his healing process.
Cilento has enjoyed taking pictures since he took his first photos in high school. After leaving the service, he decided to focus more strongly upon that artistic endeavor and acquired a bachelor’s degree in fine arts. He then started his own photography business and went on to pursue a master’s degree in fine arts. He was at the tail end of his studies in 2022 when he took The Odyssey Project’s workshop.
“That was right at the beginning of my thesis here for my MFA and I was rapidly approaching burnout,” Cilento said. “The Odyssey Project rekindled the spark.”
Each week, Cilento traveled to Buffalo to attend class with other veterans.
“As veterans, when we’re dealing with PTSD we tend to isolate and this project, for starters, it gets us out,” he said. “We get in there with a bunch of other veterans. We’re able to express ourselves because we’re in safe place.”
As a professional photographer, Cilento specializes in digital photography and often takes photos of waterfalls and other natural scenes.
When Thaxton went into the Navy at the age of 17, he became the fifth generation of his family to serve this country in uniform. Over the next three years, he was stationed in different parts of the Pacific, including Japan and California and in Alaska. One of his jobs was to help search for Russian submarines from the air.
“I flew on P3s (P3 Orion antisubmarine aircraft), chasing subs all over the world,” the 59-year-old Rochester resident said. “Got to see Russia a couple times flying
out of Alaska.”
After leaving the service, Thaxton worked in the field of information technology until he retired. In 2022, he decided to pick up a camera again and took The Odyssey Project’s workshop in Buffalo.
“It jump-started my whole career with my photography,” Thaxton said.
In addition to helping him take better photos, the classes also allowed him to develop friendships with other vets who understood what he’d experienced in the Navy.
“Guys that I can talk to about things that I could never talk to anybody else about,” Thaxton said. “You have memories and flashbacks and you can call these guys up and say ‘How, you know, how would you handle it?’”
Thaxton now shoots concerts for a living.
“That’s what I’ve always wanted to do,” he said.
In 2024 he traveled to Syracuse to shoot the band Santana as it performed onstage.
Since The Odyssey Project’s exhibition closed, Bannon has continued trying to develop the resources needed to bring it to Rochester.
“We are actively fundraising and building partnerships through Flower City Arts,” he said.
More Info?
- For more information on Brendan Bannon and The Odyssey Project, go to www.mostimportantpicture.org
- To see some of Chris Cilento’s work, go to: www.christophercilento.com
- For more information on the Flower City Arts Center, go to: https://flowercityarts.org
- To donate to The Odyssey Project, go to: https://flowercityarts.org/donate/ and designate that your funds should go to “The Odyssey Project.”