"No one puts their children in a boat unless the water is safer than the land." Jim Lommasson at the New Zone Gallery

By Sandy Brown Jensen

Published September 28, 2022 at 6:00 AM PDT

Jim Lommasson was sponsored by Photography at Oregon to show "What We Carried" at the New Zone Gallery in Eugene.

This is Sandy Brown Jensen, and you’re listening to Viz City, KLCC’s arts review program.

"If bullets had flown

And bombs had dropped

If tanks had rumbled through

If Soldiers with large, heavy firearms had shouted at you and shoved your neighbors

If bodies of people you knew had littered the streets

If fear had replaced thoughts in your troubled, terrified mind

This photo of two young men at a university in Iraq says, "Studying for a future that will never come." The author, Zaid Hussein, slashed his inked fingers over the image.

If your children could not attend school or go outside…

If food had run scarce

If electricity was now a distant memory

If all this meant you must flee

With only darkness as your cover

With a child huddled under each arm

What few things would you take?

This object, "Suitcase," belonged to Ben Goldwater of Belgium,his father's relic of his survival of the Holocaust. The father's story is documented by Ben on the page surrounding the suitcase.

With your life, and that of your family, now crammed into one bulging suitcase

What totems, what tangible mementos of the life soon to be behind you

would you salvage?

Your uncharted Journey may take years.

You may struggle to sleep in a crowded refugee camp where sickness abounds,

Where widows wail and hungry babies howl.

This hand made quilt was brought by Haifa Al Habeeb from Iraq.

You may ride buses. You may board boats or barges or rafts that look like they could sink at any moment.
You may walk through more than one country.

You may cross borders where fierce – looking guards question your purpose.You will be adrift.

You may never again see the place you have thought of as home.

What would you take to remember this precious life you are leaving?

what would you leave behind?"

This is the voice of Jim Lommasson whose emotional show called “What We Carried: Fragments and Memories From the Cradle of Civilization” is now showing in Eugene’s New Zone Gallery.

The "What We Carried" exhibit at the New Zone Gallery shows the viewer one object at a time with the owner's hand-written story.

Jim had refugees choose objects they had managed to bring with them out of war zones. He printed with lots of white space for the owner of the object to write its story on the page, and it is these original pages you will see at the New Zone.

A teddy bear, a family photo, a set of paints, tea cups–each one with a heartbreaking story.

This is an important, nationally recognized project, and we are fortunate to see one small part of it.

You will feel so deepened by this exhibit, and I’m so glad to be able to recommend it to your attention.

What would YOU carry?

This is Sandy Brown Jensen for KLCC.