ARTIFACTS TELL STORIES OF LIFE AMID GENOCIDE
Exhibit features household objects, personal mementos that speak to the lives of those who endured — or died — during mass killings
Look around your house. Your bedroom. Your kitchen. Look at those items that have been amassed over the course of a lifetime, or passed down to you from generations long-gone.
Now imagine which one (or two) precious items you would choose to take with you on a moment’s notice — as you flee from religious persecution, war or worse. Or would all be left behind?
Visitors to the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center in Skokie will find the answers to those questions and more in a new exhibit, “Stories of Survival: Object. Image. Memory.” The exhibit, featuring a collection of personal mementos, everyday household objects, toys, clothing and writings, speaks to the lives of those lost and those who survived the Holocaust as well as genocides and wars in Rwanda, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Syria, Sudan and Cambodia. But unlike other exhibits from the museum’s vast collections (and others amassed from outside sources for this particular exhibition), the items in “Stories of Survival” are also depicted in the work of awardwinning photographer Jim Lommasson, who combined his photos of the items with the personal messages and stories written by survivors or their families. The photos speak volumes; their personal messages reveal even more.
“We’ve been working on this exhibit for two years,” said Lommasson, during a recent visit to the museum as the exhibit was taking shape. “These are stories of Holocaust and genocide survivors told through those items they brought with them as they escaped conflict. I photographed the objects and sent 13-by-19-inch prints to the survivors or their families and asked them to write something about the item or their family member, or the story of their homeland. Whatever message they felt the item conveyed to them. Whatever story they wanted to share. Then I took those stories and the objects and photographed them together and blew them up into these 28-by-48-inch prints, which make up the 65 photographs in the exhibit.
“All of the images tell a story,” he continued. “When the participants add the narrative to that story it brings another level to it. In essence it makes the photograph its own