{"id":1026,"date":"2019-03-27T03:30:32","date_gmt":"2019-03-27T03:30:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sportsnewsforyou.com\/?p=1026"},"modified":"2019-03-27T03:30:32","modified_gmt":"2019-03-27T03:30:32","slug":"refugees-tell-their-stories-through-photos-of-their-possessions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/?p=1026","title":{"rendered":"Refugees Tell Their Stories Through Photos Of Their Possessions"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nPhotographer Jim Lommasson<\/span> had been struggling with a project for six months.<\/p>\n

He was taking portraits of refugees at their homes in the U.S., intending to create something similar to his photography\/oral history collection, \u201cExit Wounds: Soldiers\u2019 Stories \u2014\u00a0Life After Iraq and Afghanistan.\u201d<\/p>\n

Something, however, wasn\u2019t working.<\/p>\n

Then a woman told him about the items that she had been able to bring with her from Iraq: a family portrait and a Koran. She asked Lommasson to make a copy of the portrait. He obliged, made an extra print, and asked her to write why she brought those items.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat We Carried: Fragments & Memories from Iraq & Syria\u201d was born.<\/p>\n

Lommasson\u2019s ongoing project began in Portland, Oregon, where the photographer is based, but he has since interviewed refugees in various cities across the country. The accompanying photography exhibition has also traveled far, from Boston to Lincoln, Nebraska, to Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody wants the same thing. We all want safety. We all want a roof over our heads. We want our kids to get an education and want to buy ice cream cones for our kids. Those things are all universal,\u201d says Lommasson by phone.<\/p>\n

He continues:<\/p>\n

\n

GOOD spoke to Lommasson about a few photographs in the series currently on view in L.A.\u2019s Japanese American National Museum, where the show is positioned to highlight similarities between the experiences of Middle Eastern refugees today and the experiences of Japanese-Americans who were incarcerated during World War II.<\/p>\n

We all have had a childhood \u2026 But it differs for everyone \u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

Lommasson:<\/em><\/strong> That [used as the featured image above] is one of my favorite pieces. We expect to see teacups and candle holders and carpets and the things that we associate with the Middle East. One of the things that happens is that when we see the Barbies, 50% of the audience probably says, \u201cI had Barbies too.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, again, that\u2019s a way of breaking down stereotypes and \u201cothering.\u201d It builds bridges when we see things that are similar.<\/p>\n

\n

Lommasson: <\/strong><\/em>She left her beautiful home. They had a lot of things like that, from her whole family history. But these cups, her father had purchased a dozen of them (and saucers) before he even met Susan\u2019s mother.<\/p>\n

Over time, they lost a few … in travel … and I like the fact that there are six saucers and five cups. She wrapped each of those in her clothes, in her bag, to try to keep them from getting broken. It brings tears to my eyes when I think of that. They\u2019re also beautiful things.<\/p>\n

She told me about leaving her home. When she left, she knew that \u2014 probably not long after she leaves \u2014 somebody else is going to inhabit her house, and they\u2019re going to live with everything that she lived with all of her life, and … that\u2019s the end of everything that\u2019s been familiar to her.<\/p>\n

\n

Lommasson: <\/em><\/strong>[Haifa\u2019s] an academic, so she brought her books. It\u2019s actually a book that was purchased on Al-Mutanabbi Street, which is the bookseller street in Baghdad that was blown up by a car bomb in 2006; it\u2019s a very important part of Iraqi culture, a gathering place. It was very deliberate when the bookseller street was blown up, and that\u2019s because they\u2019re doing kind of what the German Nazi students did in the \u201830s; they burned books. That\u2019s for a deliberate reason \u2014 to destroy culture and history and free thought.<\/p>\n

So, that book that she bought on Al-Mutanabbi Street, I photographed it and gave her back the 13\u201d x 19\u201d archival print. I thought she would write around the book, like most people write around the objects; and then she did that beautiful ancient Arabic calligraphy and mushed some paint on the paper. She really turned this simple photograph into its own artifact.<\/p>\n

I really feel that all of these photographs have turned into new artifacts by what the participants have hand-generated onto these photographs. When Haifa did that, I realized that this project really can speak in personal ways.<\/p>\n

She writes about sorrow \u2014 Will my life be like my yesterday, sadness and sorrow? <\/em>But\u00a0I also see it as a statement of freedom and looking towards a new life and wondering how it\u2019s going to play out.<\/p>\n

\n

Lommasson:<\/em><\/strong> Especially for kids that age, the phone is the center of their universe; it\u2019s how they do everything, maintain everything. He showed me his phone and it was turned off.<\/p>\n

I said, \u201cAre there any pictures there that you have a real connection to?\u201d and he found that one.<\/p>\n

\n

Lommasson: <\/strong><\/em>To me, it just shows a sense of humor and being very practical. I don\u2019t think it was created because they didn\u2019t have a rug and they needed material for it. I think it\u2019s represented for a sense of humor.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s part of the joy of this project. It\u2019s the unexpected things. When I go to people\u2019s homes, they\u2019re less fortunate than me, mostly. Every time I go, they offer teas and Turkish coffee and pastries. The hospitality is so amazing and it would be an insult to say \u201cNo, I\u2019m not hungry,\u201d or \u201cI don\u2019t want to impose.\u201d<\/p>\n

The people in this project have really understood the project, what it could be, and how it\u2019s giving a voice to them. I\u2019ve had people say to me that I\u2019m the first American that\u2019s even given them the time of day.<\/p>\n

I feel that this, just by the fact that we\u2019re doing it, is important. The fact that it does reach thousands or hundreds of thousands \u2014 or maybe even millions \u2014 I think that it\u2019s doing more than I ever imagined any project I would do could have.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why we do these things. That\u2019s why I became a photographer in the first place.<\/p>\n

\n

Lommasson: <\/em><\/strong>That comes from Dr. Baher Butti in Portland. He was a pretty high-level dignitary in Iraq and dealt with bigger issues. He was also eventually put on a kill list and had to leave Iraq.<\/p>\n

But, basically, he\u2019s saying: \u201cAmericans have an image of us and it isn\u2019t exactly accurate. Here are teachers, dressed in Western clothes. We have an organized society. What you\u2019ve seen are bombed buildings and war, but before that, we had a thriving world.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

Lommasson: <\/em><\/strong>That\u2019s another one from Dr. Butti. That\u2019s him and his wife on their honeymoon. I don\u2019t know if they\u2019re on the edge of the Tigris or the Euphrates. He\u2019s basically saying, \u201cI\u2019m nostalgic about the Iraq before Saddam and I\u2019m nostalgic for the Iraq before the 2003 invasion.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

Lommasson: <\/strong><\/em>If someone were to come to me and ask me to write on a photograph of one of my objects, I would probably say, \u201cWell, where do I write? Do I use a No. 2 pencil? Should I write these?\u201d The fact that people do things in so many different ways and they write in English or Arabic \u2014 to me, every time something unique happens, I love the fact that it\u2019s making this whole project richer.<\/p>\n

\n

Lommasson: <\/em><\/strong>The family would always save the milk can after using it and\u00a0freeze water or juice on a hot summer day; the kids would have frozen juice or whatever. Almost every Iraqi who sees that says, \u201cWe had that same can. It\u2019s kind of a universal thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

Lommasson: <\/em><\/strong>That\u2019s the last picture he took in Baghdad as he was leaving his home because he wanted to remember his home. There are so many of these that have had profound effects.<\/p>\n

\n

Lommasson: <\/em><\/strong>We all have things that a child made for us, whether it\u2019s a birthday card that they drew or whatever.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what this is: an expression of a little girl who is missing her father and how that\u2019s something that\u2019s so important to him. We all have those kinds of things.<\/p>\n

Top and share photo by Jim Lommasson, used with permission.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Photographer Jim Lommasson had been struggling with a project for six months. He was taking portraits of refugees at their homes in the U.S., intending to create something similar to his photography\/oral history collection, \u201cExit Wounds: Soldiers\u2019 Stories \u2014\u00a0Life After Iraq and Afghanistan.\u201d Something, however, wasn\u2019t working. Then a woman told him about the items…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1026\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}