A D V E R T I S E M E N T
A D V E R T I S E M E N T
Thorne Anderson
A young boy in Sadr City watches his relatives repair a rocket-propelled grenade launcher in the home of a Mahdi Army fighter. Photo by Thorne Anderson; Aug. 7, 2004.
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Though not violent or bloody like some of the others, the image went straight to Joyce Morgareidge’s heart.
A young Sunni guerilla fighter sits cross-legged on the ground, his head wrapped in a colorful scarf. In his clenched fist he holds a scythe, typically used by date farmers.
His mother, who stands at his right, rests her hand comfortably on his shoulder.
Out of the 60 pieces in “Unembedded: Four Independent Journalists on the War in Iraq,” a photo exhibit at Lewis & Clark College, this one disturbed Morgareidge the most.
In the caption, the fighter is quoted as saying, “Our mothers are not afraid for us. When we join the resistance, they encourage us in our attacks.”
Morgareidge, a Lake Oswego resident, could not believe a mother could condone such violence, but she appreciated the photo’s message.
Like dozens of others, Morgareidge and her friends visited the exhibit’s opening reception last Thursday to view the photos on display in the college’s Ronna & Eric Hoffman Gallery of Contemporary Art.
The images, which will hang through March 18, tell stories of heartache and tragedy while emphasizing that life does go on amid chaos and catastrophe in Iraq. It’s the first Portland-based exhibit to focus on the country.
“In their unflinching look at war-ravaged Iraq, (the photographers) show that life there is brutal, yet poignant; that compassion co-exists with anger, hatred and fear,” according to the gallery’s Web site.
The exhibit’s four photojournalists – Iraqi Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, Americans Kael Alford and Thorne Anderson and Canadian Rita Leistner – spent months in Iraq as freelance “unembedded” journalists, capturing daily Iraqi life, from deadly bombings to joyous wedding days.
Anderson, who lives in Amsterdam, and Alford, who lives in Atlanta, were both onhand to discuss their work during a question-and-answer session.
Alford, who is also the show’s curator and promoter, was based in Iraq during the U.S.-led invasion of the country in 2003 and captured images of women in beauty salons and on their way to a henna party.
Anderson spent 10 months of the last two years in Iraq, where he was arrested by Iraqi intelligence and expelled from the country. He returned to cover occupation resistance movements and Shiite uprisings.
“We got to see the real, personal and human side (of Iraq), not what embedded journalists are seeing,” Alford said.
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