Jim Lommasson
Artist Statement:
“"A collaborative photo+writing storytelling project
with Portland’s un-housed community
For the past 14 years I have been working on collaborative projects
with communities who have lost their homes and had to flee their homelands.
They include refugees, genocide, and Holocaust survivors.
My projects deal with leaving home and the consequences.
Each project brings me closer to the community.
I’m now working with Portland’s un-housed community.
This project with unsheltered members of our community
hopefully reminds us of our common humanity.
Any one of us could find ourselves needing shelter
if just one or two factors in our lives change.
It's been said that my projects ""humanize” the refugee.
But it’s not the refugee (or the un-housed person)
that needs to be humanized...
it is us.
– Jim Lommasson”
Artist Bio:
“Jim Lommasson is a freelance photographer and teacher living in Portland. Lommasson received the Dorothea Lange–Paul Taylor Prize from The Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University for his first book, "Shadow Boxers: Sweat, Sacrifice and The Will To Survive In American Boxing Gyms." Lommasson's second book "Exit Wounds: Soldiers’ Stories – Life After Iraq and Afghanistan" and traveling exhibition is about American Veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, and their lives after their return from war. Lommasson “What We Carried: Fragments and Memories from the Cradle of Civilization." is an ongoing collaborative storytelling project with displaced Iraqi and Syrian refugees. “What We Carried" was exhibited at the Ellis Island Museum of Immigration in 2019. Lommasson’s next exhibition and book called "Stories of Survival: Object. Image. Memory" about genocide and Holocaust survivors was created in cooperation with the Illinois Holocaust Museum. Lommasson’s show, "Stories of Survival and Remembrance: A Call to Action for Genocide Prevention” was exhibited at the United Nations Headquarters in NYC in the Spring of 2023.”