The purpose of the project was to make visible the mementoes, notes, and numerous other offerings that have been left at the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial—a monument that has been key to this nation’s way of healing the acts of courage and despair.

The audience is everyone affected by the Vietnam experience. A partial intent could be to remind people of the difficulty of this war and perhaps further the notion of peaceful solutions, but indeed it is published to honor all who served, and particularly those who died.

The design facilitates understanding by simplifying and focusing on the object’s message. Captions are included only when the significance of the object in question was absolutely clear; meaning was never assumed. The layout is an attempt to express the breadth of the unique emotional presentations in the collection. Trying to be as representative as possible, the designer did rubbings of many different names on different panels. The photographer tried to portray the simplicity of individual items and arrange common items in the collection sensitively.