street roots
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April 13, 2012
Life after war
Portland photographer Jim Lommasson
leads a discussion about returning
veterans and their need to be heard today
ROBERT BRITT
C O N T R IB U T IN G W R IT E R
t took 60 years for local photographer Jim
Lommasson’s father to share his stories
from combat in World War II, and now the
son is working to ensure that veterans of Iraq
and Afghanistan do not wait to share their
experiences with war.
Lommasson — a photographer, oral
historian and author — is leading a public
discussion on April 25 about veterans’
combat experiences as part of the Oregon
Humanities’ Conversation Project.
Life After War: Photography and Oral
Histories of Coming Home is being hosted by
REACH Community Development at the
Ritzdorf Court Apartments in Southeast
Portland.
Lommasson, 60, is the son of a veteran of
the famous Battle of the Bulge, the bloody
winter clash in the Ardennes that claimed
more than 35,000 lives and saw another
140,000 wounded, captured or go missing.
“When I was a kid, I heard the same
stories that all my fellow 8-year-olds heard in
the ‘50s and ‘60s from our fathers — the
things that kind of agreed with the choppy
newsreels that we’d see on TV and in the
movies,” Lommasson said. “But that was all I
knew from his experience.”
I
His fa th e r received th re e P u rp le H e a rts
and a B ronze Star, b u t L om m asson said it
wasn’t until his dad w as in his 80s and losing
some of his cognitive abilities when he began
to open up about his WWII experience as the
two walked around Portland together.
“He would start telling me completely
different stories than what he told me when I
was eight,” Lommasson said. “As we were
walking, him with his walker and me just kind
of holding onto his arm, he would go into
these moments of silence and then come up
for air, basically, and start telling me these
stories. I realized that he was reliving those
war stories, and he’s been holding these
stories in for 60 years, and I think that was a
real tragedy.”
With that, Lommasson understood the
connection to the current generation of
veterans.
“He was basically protecting me and my
mother and everyone around him, but I knew
that today’s soldiers need to tell their stories
now. And we need to hear them now.
Lommasson began interviewing returning
service members in 2007 and soon they were
giving him items from their deployments.
One of the first was a copy of a Baghdad
newspaper printed before the fall of Saddam
Hussein’s regime. Then came thousands of
photographs taken by veterans while in Iraq
and Afghanistan.
From those pictures and interviews,
ght: M andy
lin and her
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vberry blond hair,
last take-it-all-in
ice. Turn around-
’t look back-keep
ig and walk out the
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ibe-could be-maybe
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P H O T O S B Y J IM L O M M A S S O N
A t top Christopher Arendt is a form er G uantanam o guard. “People look at the N azi concentration camps a n d wonder
somethin!! like that? I t ’s really easy. I t ’s a simple thing. You make one wrong decision and you spend the rest o f your life explaining that
T d s ^ I P e b f e l y m ld P a n y choices in my tife, and then I ended up working in a concentration camp. You wake up every day. p u t your boots
on a nd 'go to work a t the concentration camp." Abov and below right, two o f the hundreds o f veterans Jim Lommasson is chrontcallmg fo r his
book, “E xit Wounds. ”
Lommasson created the traveling art
exhibition Exit Wounds, a collection of more
than 1,500 photographs and written texts?
provided by Iraq and Afghanistan veterans.
Lommasson supplemented the candid
pictures with his own emotional portraits of
veterans and allowed the work to serve as an
oral and visual history project. “In a lot of the
photographs you can see in people’s eyes the
pain that they experienced and are still
experiencing,” he said.
“During WWII, every American knew a
soldier at war,” he said. “During the Vietnam
war, almost every American knew a soldier at
war. But During the Iraq and Afghanistan
wars, we only know two or three percent of
the soldiers at war. My goal was for American
people to get to know the soldiers that we
send to war.”
This month’s discussion series is largely
based on the Exit Wounds exhibit, which
Lommasson is turning into a book project.
“The talk is really me retelling the soldiers’ saying, ‘America is not at war. The Marine
Corps is at war; America is at the mall.’ We
stories,” he said. “I’m not professing
were told to go to the mall and that’s what we
anything; I’m not making any political
did. And we just kind of let everybody hang
statement. But one of the things that comes
out to dry,” he said. “We should never do that
from storytelling is it transfers the
again. We should ask more questions next
responsibility from the individual to the
time.”
group.
Lommasson said Exit Wounds has been
“Some of the things I do want to get across
well received, especially by veterans and their
are: How do we move a nation to care? Who
families.
is served by mythologizing war and warriors?
“I’ve had mothers and fathers tell me that
And what can we do as a community? That’s
after the veteran has talked to me they are
where the discussion comes in,” he said. “I
finally coming around and talking to their
don’t come in with the answers. Since this is
parents and telling them things that they
an Oregon Humanities Conversation Project,
hadn’t,” he said. “So it really has been an
one of the main motives is to get the people
amazing journey for me, and I’m humbled by
in the room to have a conversation with me
the experience.”
and with each other.”
Lommasson cautioned that some people
The Life After War discussion is free and
want to simply sweep the wars under the rug, open to the public. Those interested in
“because it’s troubling and they need to
attending can R SV P by calling Debbie
watch “Dancing With the Stars.” It reminds
Lowder at 503 501-5725.
me of that photo on the Internet with a sign
P H O T O S B Y J IM L O M M A S S O N