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Diversions
Atwood photos gain attention
By Joe Palmersheim
Published:
Monday, January 20, 2003
Media Credit: scott theisen
Sender Lkhagvadorj takes in �Bombed in Torabora� from the Pakistan war 2002, by Alan Pogue. Pogue�s photo exhibit in the Atwood Gallery offers photos from around the world. The collection of photos highlight the destructive forces of war and terrorism.
Currently facing the possibility of war in Iraq, the voice of the other side isn't always heard.
The new photo exhibit running in the Atwood center, "Victims of the War for Justice and Freedom," gives voice to those forgotten, affected people through the use of stark black and white photographs that are as simple as they are moving.
The photographer is Alan Pouge, and the exhibit runs until February 24, 2002. What makes this exhibit work is its simplicity. The room is stark and empty, and the photographs are mounted in frames that don't draw one's eye away from the subject matter. The pictures come from Iraq, El Salvador, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Israel and the United States.
The subject matter varies from smiling children in war torn areas (Palestine), to a mothers in the hospital watching their children die (Iraq), to Martin Sheen accepting an award for leading a non-violent protest on Fort Benning , in Georgia. What all of these photos make painfully clear is that war leads only to suffering on a very real and human level.
The most powerful pictures are two that interact with each other even though they are half way across the room from each other. One is of a memorial outside an air-raid shelter in Iraq that was bombed in 1991 during the Gulf War. According to the information next to the picture, over 400 people were killed when a bomb hit the shelter, and to this day, as the photograph will attest to, there are still flowers and trinkets placed in remembrance of the loved and lost.
The second half is a picture of a 9-11 memorial that was taken in October 2001. The setting of the photograph is the same, the flowers and pictures and messages in a different language, but the parallel is painfully clear. Regardless of circumstance, both sides grieve the dead, and in this case, it happens to be in the same way. The sadness one gets from the over-all exhibit is almost overwhelming.
This exhibit was put on by the University Program Board, the Visual Arts Committee, Veterans for Peace and N.O.V.A. The timing is appropriate, especially with the dark cloud of war looming on the horizon.
Alan Pouge will be speaking in the Atwood Theatre on Tues. Janu. 28 from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 pm. A reception will follow.
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