Exhibits

The reality of war hits the home front hard. Deployments suspend life: fathers miss out on many firsts; mothers carry the burden of family life in their absence; and children grow up with a parent spending more time at war than at home. And that’s just life during deployments. When tragedy hits, as it has all too often during these protracted wars, dreams are destroyed. Families have to learn to live with a permanent absence and a heavy sense of loss.

But the battles don’t end when war does. As soldiers return from Afghanistan and Iraq, we see how reintegrating into life at home can be a battle as well. Many soldiers come home with physical injuries or psychological wounds such as post-traumatic stress disorder, military sexual trauma, or traumatic brain injuries that tax everyone in the family.

Home Front USA looks at the sacrifices (small and large) that our military men and women and their families make in the service of our country; it also considers the monumental challenges facing our military communities and our nation as these wars draw to a close.

Exhibition Dates: February 15 – May 30, 2013

Protect Our Defenders

Invisible War

Navy SEAL Foundation

Higher Ground Sun Valley

2001-2011

Moments Captured is an exhibition that covers a wide range of topics from behind-the-scenes images of SEAL training, to detention centers and prison life in Afghanistan, tribal and wildlife in East Africa, and the winter life of the American cowboy. This collection of photographs explores worlds very few of us are able to witness first hand. When you first see these photos, you understand that Stephanie’s images are a study of power—the raw sort of power of a Navy SEAL or the distressing lack of power of a child, orphaned and displaced. But when you look a while longer, you are struck by the way these photographs offer a more complex story. Stephanie’s work shows the vulnerability of that Navy SEAL, a man as well as a warrior who struggles with the fear of failure or the pain of leaving his family. And you see the strength in that orphaned child—a strength that sustains hope for a better life. You see the sacred beauty in a lion or the tenderness of a cowboy with his horse. Moments Captured is also a show about paying attention to the world around us as well as the world we rarely see. It’s an exhibition that pulls back the veil for a moment and reveals the many stories behind it.

Exhibition Dates:  December 1, 2011 - December 1, 2012

On September 11th, 2001, the shape of the world changed for Americans. The sense of security that grew with decades of peace and prosperity was shattered on a beautiful morning in America. For the first time since Pearl Harbor, America was attacked on its own soil. Suddenly the wider world shrank and Afghanistan became America’s major national security concern. We went to war in Afghanistan because the country had long provided safe haven to terrorist groups. “Al Qaeda” and “Taliban” became household names.

Afghanistan is a country of tribes. Tribal identification trumps national identification and that is one of the many complexities of this country that makes it impossible to understand. There are entire generations in Afghanistan who know nothing but war. Entire lives have been lived to the soundtrack of bullets and bombs. There are generations of men who have lived lives of quiet desperation while they watched foreign invaders knock down their doors and take their brothers in the middle of the night. And there are men who stood by as they watched the Taliban enforce a brutal and inhumane rule on their neighbors. There are scores of women who once knew what freedom tasted like, but for years had to live under a veil of silence, enforced ignorance, and servitude. Generations only know a country invaded by outsiders and that breeds distrust and anger. When we try to understand life in Afghanistan, we have a hard time understanding what it is like to live in constant war. This isn’t to excuse the violence that has gripped Afghanistan for generations; it’s just an observation about life in the midst of war.

It’s 2011 and we’ve been at war for 10 years in a country that did not attack us. As I sat in a Blackhawk helicopter flying from Kabul to Khost during my last trip to Afghanistan, I was plagued by questions. I needed to get on the ground and witness life in Afghanistan to understand what this 10-year war has been about and why Afghanistan had become a safe haven for terrorists. I realized that those questions aren’t for me to ask or answer; I was in Afghanistan to document a country in the midst of a rebirth. I was there to document the war and the peace at the root of such a rebirth.

It’s easy to say what war looks like; we have photographs, videos, first-hand accounts—but what does peace look like in the midst of war? Everywhere I looked in Afghanistan, there were moments that told a story and that story offered brief hints of peace: there’s a woman shrouded in the azure of a burka walking down the road passing a soldier shrouded in the camouflage of his military garb, both isolated by their ideas of the other—but they pass, without incident, and that’s peace; there’s a group of women, multiple generations, watching over their children as they play on the rooftop. I wanted to know the weight of their conversation because the fact they had carved out a few minutes to participate in this ritual of women conversing, that’s peace. The tailor working in his shop, isolated yet open for business, doing what he loves—that’s peace. It’s the small, everyday moments that miraculously take shape in the midst of the bullets and bombs. These are moments we might not recognize in a place protected from the realities of war because they are so commonplace. But here, in Afghanistan where entire generations have known nothing but war, peace should be documented, recognized, and honored.

As I consider the cost of this war, in terms of the lives lost or shattered, I cannot help but wonder who is accountable for all of this? We went to war with an idea that can’t be bound to a geographic location. It’s an idea worth fighting—terror—but I can’t help but think, who is accountable for the lives we’ve lost, and who is accountable for the money we’ve spent on a war we cannot win?  Who will stand up and take responsibility? At long last, when someone does, maybe we can begin to heal and maybe then, peace will take root in Afghanistan.

Exhibition Dates: September 8 – December 1, 2011

Navy SEAL Foundation

Twin Towers Orphan Fund

A child’s laugh.  It’s a universal symbol for innocence and unburdened life.  When you hear a child laugh, it conjures up nostalgia for a time less complicated. Running barefoot in the park.  Summertime. Too many children around the world live lives defined by poverty, enslavement, abandonment, disease, war, and powerlessness.  And yet, these children still laugh, hope, and dream.

We are currently living amidst a global crisis and everyday, we turn a blind eye to the devastation.
Around the world, one billion children live in extreme poverty, eight million children are displaced, 143 million children are orphaned, and two million children are enslaved.

Desmond Tutu once said, “When we see others as the enemy, we risk becoming what we hate.  When we oppress others, we end up oppressing ourselves.  All of our humanity is dependent upon recognizing the humanity in others.”  Sometimes when we deal with the overwhelming numbers of children suffering these injustices, it’s paralyzing.  The challenge is seeing the individual rather than the mass and then, we recognize the humanity in the other.

In my travels to developing countries, I am always struck by the way the children handle the adversity or devastation they face every day. These images are moments in larger lives.  These images are my way of giving voice to their experiences.

Exhibition Dates: July 15 – September 7, 2011

Anjali House

Sangkheum Center for Children

Girl Child Network

My trip to Thailand, Laos and Cambodia came on the heels of a trip to Afghanistan where I toured prisons, traveled through war ravaged towns, and flew over wide expanses of desert land that played host to twenty years of invasions and destructive wars. There are generations in Afghanistan who know no other way of life.

With a three day turn around, I found myself in Southeast Asia, a land of green that has seen its fair share of conflict. However, in this lush land, the jungle grows over the evidence of those wars. The air, heavy with moisture, acts as a salve, a healing agent. Those conflicts are not forgotten, but they are not the lens through which everything else is understood.

It was an abrupt transition, from desert war zone to tropical place of peace. As I explored, I was struck by the tranquility and mystery of the temples. Juxtaposed with the way religion has been used in Afghanistan to degrade and destroy, the Khmer temples stand as evidence of the human inclination to create rather than destroy.

For me, this was a place of peace. Amanpuri.

Exhibition Dates: May 23 – July 14, 2011

Edward Abbey once dreamed of a “brutal mysticism where the naked self merges with the nonhuman world and yet somehow survives still intact, individual, separate.” He recognized that we take our cues from the natural world and that we can glimpse the sacred if we just pay attention.  Abbey sees that we have much to learn from this “nonhuman world” but still he focused on his separateness from nature.

In the wilds of Africa, we can experience the ways in which the spiritual world can merge with the physical.   The animals, in their natural habitat, teach us about the importance of cooperation, balance, and awareness.  Instead of Abbey’s “separateness”, we sense a unity in action.  It is delicate and brutal this dance of predator and prey, but all of it is sacred and beautiful.  It is a testament to survival.

Exhibition Dates: November 30, 2010 - May 22, 2011

David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust

Living with Lions – Lion Guardians

DFGFI:Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund Int.

Since September 11^th 2001 much of the world has been in the grip of clashing narratives.  In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, we inhabited a polarized existence; there were villains and there were victims – there wasn’t much room for anything in between.   Even then, even so close to the open wound, we must have known such labels, such stories, were too simple, dangerously simple.  Now, nearly a decade passed, the narratives have shifted and we often find ourselves cast in the role of aggressor or invader.  Or at least that is one story.

The story is being written all around us.  Stories can either divide and alienate or stories can unite and heal.  Stories are one way we impose order on perceived chaos: stories offer reason, stories offer explanation, stories offer comfort, but stories also plant the seeds of conflict as we know from the current war of narratives.

The documentarian’s job is to complicate the narrative.  Here, you will not see the spectacle of violence or the spectacle of martyrs or heroes.  Here, you will see everyday people.  People living a world away and people living in very different circumstances. Here, you will see people with whom you have something in common, some piece of their story will resonate with you.  Here are mothers, daughters, sons and fathers.  Listen to their stories.

Exhibition Dates: October 25 – November 29, 2010

UNFPA:United Nations Population Fund

Pacific Council on International Policy

“What he loved in horses was what he loved in men, the blood and the heat of the blood that ran them.”

-       Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses

A man on a horse – that’s where the myth of the cowboy begins.  The myth evokes a powerful masculinity defined by self-reliance and solitude.  The cowboy moves through life tethered only by his connection to the land and the animals running on it.  The work he does is not glamorous – it’s hard; it starts early in the morning; rain, shine or snow and often stretches long into the night.  The working cowboy leads a migratory life, always riding after the next job.  The constants in his life are the land and the horses.

The rodeo offers us the cowboy at play and the cowboy plays hard. Here, in the dust of the arena, boys become men as they stand up or hold on in the face of raw power.  A man’s worth is defined by the passing of seconds as he defies the laws of physics.

These photos offer a look at the cowboy at work and at play.

Exhibition Dates: September 3 – October 15, 2010

“The darkest thing about Africa has always been our ignorance of it.” George Kimble

Some places just call to you. When I was young, the movie Born Free introduced me to a world that I didn’t know existed. It represented the unknown—a land so far removed from the life I lived in Los Angeles. It was a place where the animals I had seen in the zoo, subdued in their cages, roamed free. As the years passed, I had to balance that Africa, the one of open landscapes and wild animals, with the Africa on the news—the war-torn, drought-ridden, impoverished Africa. It was hard to reconcile two drastically different narratives. But the call of Africa was powerful then and it grew as I did.

During my first trip to East Africa, I changed in monumental and unexpected ways. The hard simplicity of life in the tribe forever broadened the way I look at the world. I came to understand something about life at a primal level, and even when I returned to my life full of modern conveniences, I saw the world differently. It’s true that there is much about life in East Africa that is threatened. There are animals on the verge of extinction due to poaching, and there are communities torn apart by war and poverty. But the tribal way of life is not vanishing; it is a hard and simple life, but it persists even in the face of modernity. There is something about that persistence that inspires me.

My love affair with Africa is something I can’t explain. Maybe it has to do with the fact that I grew up a city girl, surrounded by the sounds of urban life. In Africa, I am in the midst of the sounds that belong there—the weather coming into camp quickly, the birds calling to the morning, the rustling of the animals on the edge of camp, the mating calls of the lions, and the comforting silence of mid-afternoon. In Africa I feel free and alive. All around, there are no cages, no fences, and no walls marking territory or property. It is a freedom that reminds me to pay attention to the silence around me.

Africa calls to me still.

“The drums of Africa still beat in my heart” Mary McLeod Bethune

Exhibition Dates:  February 1 – November 1, 2009

David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust

DFGFI:Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund Int.

Living with Lions – Lion Guardians

Girl Child Network