Jim Lommasson - Exit Wounds: Combat Trauma and Trials of Homecoming

This is a show I thought people might be interested in seeing.

Mana

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Jim Lommasson - Exit Wounds: Combat Trauma and Trials of Homecoming

April 2-May 2, 2009
Reception and Panel Discussion - Thursday, April 16, 2009 3:00-4:30pm, Reception 5:00pm Helzer Gallery (building 3)

Portland Community College - Rock Creek Campus Helzer Gallery (building 3) 17705 NW Springville Rd. Portland, OR 97229

Photos of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans by Jim Lommasson. And over fifteen hundred photos by the soldiers taken while in country, including interviews and writing by the soldiers. Exit Wounds: The Myth of Homecoming

My Dad was an infantryman in The Battle of the Bulge, the bloodiest battle that U.S. forces experienced in World War II. As I was growing up, in the ‘50s and ‘60s, the stories he told were generic, and agreed with the choppy newsreels and movies I was raised on. His stories seemed to support the nobility of serving your country as a soldier and that it was right to fight in a war.

When I approached eighteen in 1968, and the Viet Nam War was raging, my dad was dead set against sending me to war. He said, “The one thing that I learned from volunteering into the Army was, never volunteer for anything.” I got enough subtle messages over the years that maybe war wasn't all it was cracked up to be.

Today, more than sixty years later, my father only now has started sharing more intimate, painful wartime experiences, as we go for walks around our North Portland neighborhood where we lived most of our lives. The walks are long even though the distances are short. His walker rattles and his feet barely clear the cracks in the sidewalk as we amble along. His memory ebbs and flows, as past blurs with present, and the new stories reveal a darker side of war.

It's clear to me now the man who gave me everything he was capable of, did his best to spare me and everyone else the reality of war. After the war ended, his generation was told to "man-up," buy a house and pretend that nothing happened. Despite all he experienced, and the pain he was withholding, he was, and still is, a loving, generous father. The war has always been with him privately, but now he is beginning to talk about what really happened at the Battle of the Bulge as we walk, as it fades into his fog of war.

My father’s revelations gave me an idea about doing a soldiers' oral history of the current war in Iraq and Afghanistan. I feel that soldiers need to tell their stories and we need to hear them. The soldiers that I have been interviewing and photographing have been generous with their stories and intimate feelings. They have taught me what it is to descend into hell and then try to find their way home. The details of my father’s experience may ultimately be lost with him, but as I chronicle the lives of today’s young soldiers, their story is his story…I hope they can find their way out of the fog.

Sixty years is way too long to keep a secret.

Here is a link to more information about Exit Wounds:
exitwoundshomecoming.blogspot.com/
jim@lommassonpictures.com
www.lommassonpictures.com