Exit Wounds: Stories of War

By Kaleb Gubernick, Cascadia Weekly

Exit Wounds, March 2 - 20, 2009, Western Washington University, Bellingham, Washington

When Jim Lommasson’s father returned home from service during World War II, the stories he told were the stuff of wartime legend, rarely straying from the typical, generic pro-war stances of the time. It wasn’t until decades later that he began to come to terms with what he had experienced overseas and started to tell his son his real stories of war—stories just as horrifying as the prospect of war itself.

And just as Lommasson listened to his father talk about how the reality of war had affected him, he has done the same for a group of Pacific Northwest-based veterans who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. In essence, their stories are Lommasson’s exhibit, entitled “Exit Wounds: Combat Trauma and Trials of Homecoming.”

The exhibit is not about politics, or art, or anti-war sentiments. The sole purpose of the show is to make the all-too-often silenced voices heard.

“It’s not about me, it’s about the soldiers,” Lommasson says. “I truly believe we need to hear their stories.”

The stories are told simply but effectively with hundreds upon hundreds of photos, some taken by Lommasson and others submitted by the soldiers themselves, fastened to the walls of the exhibit in large clusters. Within the clusters, it seems the entire spectrum of human emotion is on display: rage, sadness, bewilderment, grief, sorrow and happiness. Some of the photos are relentlessly gut-wrenching—shots of the charred remains of dead bodies lying desolate among dust-covered brush are scattered throughout, and some pictures offer ominous views through the scopes of rifles as their crosshairs are trained on the heads of blurry, faceless men.

At the same time, captured moments of sheer joy and triumph occupy the same space as photos of beaming soldiers with ear-to-ear grins kissing their significant others stand out among the other disheartening fare.

Testimonials from the soldiers are also thrown into the mix of photos—some haunting, some hopeful. Judging by the confessions, it seems death and destruction, two ideas the entertainment industry somehow thrives off of, have seemingly become the bane of many of these soldiers’ existences, cropping up in the form of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

“Almost every soldier is affected by it,” Lommasson says. “It’s what you should have when you come back from war. It’s what makes us human, but also punishes us.”

Lommasson says the show has been such a success to the point where he has become surprised at how uncontroversial it has seemed to be—he was even able to reverse some negative feelings some may have harbored.

After running a nine-page spread written by Lommasson about the exhibition, Portland Monthly Magazine received a phone call from a veteran unhappy with the article. The magazine decided to put him in contact with Lommasson. He spoke honestly and compassionately with the disgruntled veteran, who said the article portrayed the soldiers as weak and helpless. By the end of the conversation, the vet was asking Lommasson if there was any way he could help with the project.

In a sense, instead of these soldiers helping Lommasson with the exhibit, he is helping these soldiers, if only by listening.

“If people can talk about what they’ve been through, that’s good,” Lommasson says. “That’s the first step to healing.”