Sunday, March 11, 2012

March 15 What We Carried

PortlandOrUSNow is generally focused on events close to Portland city center. We only occasionally cover school galleries, though their shows are consistently often good. It's our culture. But sometimes we note items in the suburbs and this is one.

Longtime Portland photographer Jim Lommasson has flexed his lens toward social practice, and poignant narrative, focused on the small stories of individuals affected by big events. These have included Katrina and Iraq War veterans. Now he brings, What We Carried, a refugee project.

The United States has been blessedly insulated from war on its soil for almost 150 years. Yet the social impact and resentments, the wounds and scar tissue, from that time are still present. What is it like for people who have personally lived in war?

Lommasson explores that in his project What We Carried: Fragments from the Cradle of Civilization. He has been interviewing refugees to the United States from Iraq. He collects their stories and photographs the personal items they carried with them, often by foot, through borders and refugee camps, over months and years, before arriving here.

The show opens tonight. Lommasson gives a talk about it March 21 at 2. At Print Arts Northwest www.printartsnw.org in the Washington County Museum on the PCC Rock Creek Campus. 17677 NW Springville Road Opening 5:30PM-8 Free