Celebrating rather than exposing

Does "one could say I was celebrating rather than exposing them" mean "one could say I was representing the victory of the soldiers rather than representing their atrocities"?

Context:

the well-trained and highly regarded Leon Golub observed:
And the guys I portray, one could say I was celebrating rather than exposing them. For example, if the Pentagon had wanted, they could have displayed one of [my] huge Vietnam paintings and claimed it as a victory painting. It shows our boys vertical and the gooks down. That’s a victory painting. Just like the Romans and the Greeks showed off their victories, the winners and the losers. So why is this an anti-war painting?