Captain Gabriela Ordonez-Mackey, U.S. Army, 2008. Photograph by Sascha Pflaeging.
The recent launch of the Veterans Oral History Project in North Carolina brings When Janey Comes Marching Home: Portraits of Women Combat Veterans to CDS. The exhibit includes forty large-scale (one is 50 in. x 60 in., the rest are 30 in. x 40 in.) color photographic portraits and accompanying oral histories of female soldiers from all five branches of the military who served in combat zones in Iraq and Afghanistan. While women are officially barred from combat in the American armed services, in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, where there are no front lines, the ban on combat is virtually meaningless.
The exhibit, and a book of the same name (University of North Carolina Press, 2010), is a collaboration between photographer Sascha Pflaeging and author Laura Browder, Tyler and Alice Haynes Professor in American Studies at the University of Richmond. In taking the photos, Pflaeging was interested in “documenting these women visually while the situation is still present, their feelings and emotions still raw and very real.” The resulting portraits, and accompanying text, convey stories that are by turns moving, comic, heartbreaking, and thought-provoking.
When Janey Comes Marching Home will run through April 21, 2012, in the Lyndhurst, Porch, and University Galleries at the Center for Documentary Studies, 1317 W. Pettigrew St., Durham, North Carolina.
Click here for slideshows and for more information on the exhibit and the book.
When Janey Comes Marching Home: Portraits of Women Combat Veterans, was made possible by generous grants from the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the College of Humanities and Sciences, Virginia Commonwealth University. The exhibition was organized by the Visual Arts Center of Richmond, where it premiered in 2008. The exhibition tour is administered by the Anderson Gallery, School of the Arts, Virginia Commonwealth University, with additional support from the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities.
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[...] Project in North Carolina brought an accompanying exhibit of the same name to CDS this month. When Janey Comes Marching Home includes forty large-scale color photographic portraits and accompanying oral histories of female [...]
I completed my service obligation in March of 2012 and got out of the Army because I lost primary custody of Jackson whom I was pregnant with in 2008-2009. Hopefully the Cumberland Court System in Fayetteville, NC will return Jackson back to me his father is a civilian of Jacksonville, NC and has a grandmother who has connections with the North Carolina Family Law System. It has been a tough battle for I lost Jackson when he was one year old and had been in the Army for nine years before giving birth to him in 2009. Jackson is now 3 years old and I reside in Northern Virginia. Just one of the many downfalls for women serving in the Army. Although I never deployed in 2011 his father only allowed 45 days of visitation, limited contact and communication with Jackson. I continued to pay $1048 a month in child support and carry medical insurance for Jackson. I assumed all martial debt because my then attorney told me he could go after my retirement. I found out later that was not true for we had been married less than one year. Thanks you again this article and God Bless.
Virginia
CPT, LG