Portland State Magazine Winter 2019

23 JIM LOMMASSON '72 launched his photo- graphic oral history of refugees after interview- ing an Iraqi woman. When he asked her about a small family portrait in her living room, she told him, "When I left, all I could take was my daughter under one arm, my Quran and this picture of my family." After Lommasson made prints of the photo for her, he asked her to write her story on the picture. "Once she did that, I realized this was the most effective means of storytelling I could do," he explains. That revelation led to his current documenta- ry and photography project, "Stories of Surviv- al: Object. Image. Memory," which showcases more than 60 personal objects and artifacts brought to America by displaced people. The traveling exhibit was commissioned by the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center in the Chicago area, where it was on display until Jan. 13. For the exhibit, Lommasson photographed the treasured objects carried by refugees who fled from the Holocaust and genocides or conflicts in Armenia, Bosnia, Cambodia, Iraq, Rwanda, South Sudan and Syria. SHOWN on plain white backgrounds, the objects explore the relationship between what refugees took with them, the objects' meaning to the original owner, and the items' subse- quent significance. "The objects reflect the lives of their one- time owners: childhood, home, culture and