CURRENT & PAST EXHIBITION VENUES

2010  Carlos Gallery, The University of the South, Sewannee, TN

2009  City Club of Portland, Portland, OR

 Helzer Gallery, Rock Creek Campus, Portland Community College, Portland, OR

 Western Gallery, Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA

2008  New American Art Union, Portland, OR

 

 

Exit Wounds: The Myth of Return

Photographer Jim Lommasson has compiled a series of photographs and interviews with American veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The soldiers speak the truth about war, their participation, and the effects on themselves and those caught in the crossfire. The exhibit examines and raises questions about a generation of soldiers largely invisible to the American public. The stories are profound and timeless. Returning soldiers have always had to process the real and transformative traumas of battle while integrating into a new civilian culture that lacks the clarity, meaning, and sense of ‘mission’ that war can provide. But how will these returning ‘silent warriors’ shape the social fabric into which they must now incorporate? With bodies and minds completely attuned to the violence and exigencies of war, what is the psychic space these young veterans inhabit after their tours? What happens when battle-bred virtues, such as a heroic disregard for one’s life and pain, become a liability or even contemptible in their new home? Exit Wounds looks at some of the trials of reintegration for this generation of invisible warriors and asks whether they do in fact get to ‘come home.’

Exit Wounds is now a traveling exhibition comprised of 30 – 40 exhibition prints selected from more than 10,000 digital images of Lommasson's photographs of Iraq and Afghanistan War veterans and their families, plus snapshot-size photographs (2000+ to date) taken by Iraq and Afghanistan War soldiers in the war zones, and approximately 100 interviews he has conducted with participants.

A book to follow. (To view the book mock-up...)