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Curators’ Statement

Just as death is part of life, so are wars and all the artifacts of destruction that accompany them.  This exhibition was conceived just after the United States invasion of Iraq in 2003, and it has been shown in seven venues ranging from the Finish Embassy in Washington, D.C. to the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine to the Theatre for the New City in New York City.  Along the way artists and works have been added to encompass many different wars and responses to violence around our world.  It remains sadly relevant today.

Do women photographers capture aspects of war differently than men?  See for yourself.  These seven women photographers are each unique, as different from one another in their aesthetic technique as one gender is from the other.  What each of these artists convey in common are the mysteries and tragedies of war. 

War involves killing and so much more.  Topics as big as politics, philosophy, history, the ethics of right and wrong all surface in wars along with the more down-to-earth facts of survival, looting, hurt, fear, grief, wounds, loss and, and always destructive change -- flattened buildings, butchered landscapes, fractured visions and crumpled futures for women, men and children.   All these subjects can be found in the photographs of this exhibition.

Donna De Cesare offers a most improbable combination – a dove and a gun, peace and war, a little Salvadorian girl newly rel;ocated to Los Angeles, gently stroking a bird as a weapon lies matter-of-factly nearby.  This photograph has so many nuances.

Ruth Fremson’s photographs first shown in The New York Times are in full color, centrally about people.  These beautifully composed portraits, from the most recent wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Middle East, force us to ask questions such as:  Why does the woman appear to leap capriciously into a trough with what looks like currency?  And is she being followed?  Why do these figures sleep in the desert?  Is that looting going on with Saddam’s portrait in the background? 

Leslie Fratkin works in black and white to make photographs that are eerie, elegant and intimate studies of the images of war, in this case from Bosnia, nearly a decade ago.  There is mystery here too.  How does the encrusted key symbolize Hotel Europa?  How odd to see PEACE on what is presumably a Sarajevo wall?  Where is the sniper or alley in this sun-dappled picture that seems the epitome of a serene European boulevard? 

Maggie Foskett’s fine art photographs are not quite photographs in the usual sense.  Soldiers from three countries stand in front of Maxim’s in Paris at the end of World War I.  The feminine torso looms behind these soldiers, connected in almost a supernatural, haunting way, one with the title, Women Give Birth to Men Who Wear Uniforms.  Other photographs are composites of the ephemera of wartime.  And one, Wound is an abstracted evocation of bright red blood and decomposition, life collapsed. 

The Bohusovice Station and the Gas Valves Crematorium evoke a sense of doom, despair, tragedy, evil.  Black and white and shades of gray in these haunting Holocaust photographs by Judy Ellis Glickman create a lonely nightmare scenario as if you suddenly find yourself in a bleak place where everyone else has been killed.

Barbara Goodbody’s portrait of this Tibetan boy just after his trek over the rugged Himalayas, the loss of his parents and his arrival at the Tibetan Homes School in India captures a sense of soul in his direct, fragile, vulnerable and yet improbably hopeful face.

Katarina Weslien’s new media work juxtaposes Mohammed Atta’s eyes from his passport photo with a string of text to suggest the psychological state of this 9/11 instigator who could commit an act of war, of terror, of suicide, and of incalculable human passion.

Each of these artists is concerned with wars’ myriad details.  Yet their compositions arouse our emotions and raise questions we cannot answer.  If the medium is the message, there are a lot of unknowns here.  Dozens of mysteries but no answers about the reasons for war, the winners and losers, the victims, the spoils, the rights and wrongs.  The richness of these photographs forces us in the end to contemplate one of life’s ultimate mysteries – what is the logic of life if violence and death are so common…still.  

I wish to thank Kevin Callahan, my colleague and co-curator/preparator extraordinaire.  

Anne B. Zill, Women’s Center for Ethics in Action,
A Member Center of the National Council for Research on Women

This exhibition has been seen in seven previous venues over the almost five year  period since its creation.  They are:

1. Embassy of Finland, Washington, D.C., co-sponsored by the National Council of Women’s Organizations, fall, 2003
2. Women for Women International, DC offices, 2003/04
3. UNIFEM USA exhibition, Wash, DC, March 8, 2004
4. 8 ½ Gallery, N St SW, DC, April/May 2004 (with a reception in connection with the March for Women’s Lives, April 24, 2004)
5. 3 Fish Gallery, Portland, Maine, co-sponsored by Peace-Action Maine, August 20, 2004 – September 20, 2004
6. College of the Atlantic, Bar Harbor, Maine, November 8, 2004 – December 2004
7. Theater for the New City, 155 First Avenue, NYC, Sept 6, 2006 – October, 2006

For additional information please contact:          kimmel.galleries@nyu.edu

                           www.centerforethicsinaction.org