On his way to work at a north Chicago public high school, Spiro Bolos has been making a photo series of people on this train station bench. On the way to visit his partner one Sunday afternoon, he saw these young men. The US navy’s largest training camp is about an hour away; home to the force’s only boot camp and 20,000 sailors, marines, soldiers and Department of Defense civilians.
Bolos thinks these men had been given a weekend pass to visit the city. He says they were looking at their phones and preparing their backpacks when he took this shot. As one stood up to stretch, Bolos captured their image.
“My students at the high school come from a relatively privileged background and tend to go to college right after graduation,” Bolos says. “From that perspective I feel a bit conflicted when I see navy recruits on the line. I’m glad if the military life they’ve chosen has given them a better opportunity than they might have had in their home towns, but at the same time, I wonder what challenges may lie in their very near future.”
