A Comparison Of Anna Coleman Vs. The Trenches

Coleman vs The Trenches During WWI, one of the deadliest conflicts in world history, the use of new weaponry and trench warfare claimed the lives of 16 million soldiers, and mutilated the faces of over 37,000 more (Broken Gargoyles). Anna Coleman Ladd, an American sculptor from Boston, brought in her artistic skills to help aid these victims. She was classically trained in Paris and Rome, and had many well-known art pieces. In 1917, she opened up her own studio to put her skills to work in making masks for facially disfigured soldiers (Maker of Masks). Anna Coleman Ladd is a monumental figure in American history for revolutionizing the military-medical field by using her immense artistic ability to bring value to the lives of mutilated soldiers.
Towards the end of WWI, Ladd opened up her shop called “Studio for Portrait Masks” through the Red Cross to help with the war effort, one of the first and most renowned mask shops of the time. “As director of the Red Cross mask-making studio in Paris, Ladd worked with mutiles de la face, men who had taken shrapnel, bullets, and flamethrowers to the face. Ladd studied dozens of those disfigured faces, then sculpted masks made to resemble the soldiers’ former selves” (One Sculptor’s Answer). Ladd used her shop to invite all soldiers, each with their own individual and unique damages, into her care, free of charge. She sent them home with custom-made masks, making them look brand new, and did it all out of the kindness of her heart. Not only did her shop have the most inviting and safe environment, it also produced some of the best and most detailed work ever created in her time. “In Ladd’s studio, which was credited with better artistic results, a single mask required a month of close attention” (Faces of War). Out of the few other mask studios in business, Ladd’s came out on top, changing the medical field that we now call anaplastology. Her dedication, skills, and techniques created pieces that outshone most other methods of prosthetic rehabilitation in the early 1900’s, due to her considerable exertion of effort and devotion to improving the lives of these veterans.
She advanced the anaplastology division of the medical field with her leading-edge techniques and talents. Additionally, she used her sculpting skills to not only make art, but to create art that greatly impacted the lives of others for the better, an uncommonly seen aspect at the time. Finally, she brought fulfillment and contentedness to these distorted heroes of the battlefields. “Sometimes, art can change how people see the world. But Anna Coleman Ladd made art that changed how the world saw people” (Lubin qtd. In One Sculptor’s