Eleven Women Facing War

Last week, a friend of mine came to visit from out of town and we took a trip to the Canadian War Museum. Neither of us had ever been to the museum, but we were excited to finally go because a special exhibit caught our attention: Eleven Women Facing War.

The exhibit was extremely powerful and told the stories of those who are often left without a voice. The exhibit features eleven women from different countries and explains how their lives have been affected by war. Nick Danziger, the photographer who put the exhibition together, first met these eleven women in 2001 to take pictures of them for a Red Cross study. He went back to find the same women ten years later in order to document how things had changed.

The exhibit is set up on the walls of a large room and you walk your way through the stories. The stories are told through carefully selected photographs (I'd say there were no more than seven for a particular story) and very brief captions set on the wall.

These stories were captivating, heartbreaking, and inspiring. Many women lost their husbands in war, the bodies returned to them years after they first went missing. A couple women (moreso girls) were forced to take care of their siblings when both parents disappeared. One woman lost her leg by stepping on a mine. Another had her hand cut off by an enemy soldier. A young girl was raped by a soldier and left in the bush to care for herself and her baby. When approached in 2001, the women all had bad stories to tell. When Nick Danziger returned in 2011, most of the women's lives had improved dramatically. They learned to move on from their experiences of war and chose to highlight better things. For example, their children had grown up to be intelligent boys and girls and they finally found peace after receiving news about a missing soldier.

The website for the Canadian War Museum has all the videos online for viewing. The following video tells the story of Nasrin, a woman who lost her leg while collecting firewood. All of the women's stories are available in the playlist.

The Eleven Women Facing War exhibit was moving and empowering. There are so many stories to be told.

If you live in the Ottawa area and are interested in seeing the exhibit in person, it will be at the Canadian War Museum until April 21, 2013. Website: http://www.warmuseum.ca/home/.