Writing and Resistance: Ending War One Story at a Time



One afternoon in Spring 2003, as I was sitting in Arizona State University Professor Dick George’s ‘History of Photography’ class a series of black and white images of the My Lai Massacre were projected on the lecture hall screen. My first reaction was to wonder how these provocative images had ended up side by side with the mostly innocuous images by photographic icons like Henri Cartier-Bresson, Man Ray, Richard Avedon, Robert Capa and Dorothea Lange. I asked myself how I had reached the age of 45 and never seen these images or heard about My Lai in my high school history class.



On March 16, 1968, the date of the massacre I was a ten year old girl living on the Naval Air Station in Glenview, Illinois where my dad was stationed. He had served a tour of duty in Viet Nam as a Material Control Officer monitoring the ordering and receipt of aircraft parts. He was assigned to the Flying Black Ponies whose mission was to provide air support to ground troops, Navy SEALS and the ‘Riverine Forces’ i.e. gun boats and patrol boats.



I later learned that Dick George had joined the Air Force at age 22 inspired as a kid by John F. Kennedy’s 1961 inaugural address. In a July 2010 interview he told me, “Well a young offspring of a bootlegger by the name of Joseph Kennedy became President of the United States and in his 1961 inaugural address he said, ‘Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.’ And that inspired me as a kid and when he was assassinated that was a death in the family. And I had that spinning at all times thinking you know I really do need to do something for the community, for the country." In 1970 he filed for conscientious objector non-combatant status. “I was not trying to get out of the military” he said, “I was just not going to kill.”



The My Lai Massacre lecture was pivotal in my decision to switch from fine art to documentary photography.



Most of my photographic work has been directly or indirectly about war;
In 2002-2003 I criss crossed the country photographing anti war protests leading up to the Iraq war. In March 2005, I traveled with the Global Exchange delegation "Women Making Change" to Afghanistan for an Independent Study Project in photography. The Mardi Gras 360 photo workshop, in February 2008, was an opportunity to talk to and photograph homeless veterans living under the Claiborne overpass in New Orleans.



Most recently I have become interested in the effects of lobbyists, special interests and the wealthy on U.S. domestic and foreign policy particularly war. One can’t talk about war without talking about the interconnectedness of war and economics.



‘Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.’
– Dwight D. Eisenhower



Author Tom Bissell writes in his book The Father of All Things, A Marine, His Son and the Legacy of Viet Nam;



‘What any war’s igniters rarely admit are the small, terrible truths that have held firm for every war ever fought, no matter how necessary or avoidable: This will be horrible, and whatever happens will scar us for decades to come. Indeed, even necessary wars can destroy the trust of a people in their leaders, just as war destroys human beings on both sides of the rifle.’



My goal as a documentary photographer is;
To educate and agitate, To initiate dialogue,
To visually document the costs of war,
To reject the supposition that we as individuals are powerless to effect change,
To inspire the viewer to engage in quantifiable action to advance peace in the U.S. and the world,
and to submit that human life is sacred and that killing in any form is uncivilized.



My goal as a Voices of Our Future Correspondent is to acquire writing and investigative reporting skills to improve my effectiveness as a reporter and photojournalist.

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