Art Exhibition Features Student/Soldier’s Photographs From Iraq

Leesha Quigg, 24, looks at the world through a number of filters. She’s a single mom and part Native American. She’s a Montgomery County Community College student, and she’s a U.S. Army Reserves Civil Affairs specialist, recently returned from a year in the province of Diwaniyah in Iraq.

“Photographs from Iraq,” a special exhibition at Montgomery County Community College’s West Campus, will focus on what Quigg sees through the filter on the lenses of her Nikon.

During her tour in Iraq, Quigg captured the simple and poignant moments of the lives of the Iraqi people—children playing in the streets, students learning in refurbished schools, and widows attempting to rebuild their lives

It’s a far cry from the images of uniformed military personnel, destruction from improvised explosive devices, and the explosive encounters with suicide bombers the public has come to expect from war-torn Iraq.

“Leesha Quigg's body of work shows an intimate interaction with the Iraqi people during wartime,” exhibition organizer and curator Walter Plotnick, senior lecturer and co-coordinator of fine arts at the college, said in a press release. “It goes beyond the front-line images we are used to and takes us into the lives of the civilians doing their best to preserve some kind of normalcy for themselves and their children, helped by Americans like Ms. Quigg.”

Plotnick said Quigg’s profound photographs will be on display during the special exhibition from April 6 through 29 on the second floor above the North Hall Gallery at the West Campus, 16 High St., Pottstown.  

Plotnick recommends watching a video about Quigg.

“Seeing and hearing Leesha talk about her images and her experience will allow viewers to have a better understanding of who she is and our upcoming exhibition,” Plotnick said in an e-mail interview.

“It pulls at me very strongly,” Quigg said in the video of her experience in Iraq, “in a way that makes me want to almost go back and finish things and reach out to more people.”

At the same time, MCCC will host its sixth annual West Campus Art Students’ Exhibition and Competition on the first floor of the North Hall Gallery. The students’ exhibition will include artwork featuring a variety of subjects and styles in an array of media.

A reception for both exhibitions will take place April 13 at 5 p.m. The awards ceremony for the students’ exhibition will take place at 6 p.m., followed by a gallery talk by Quigg. The exhibitions and reception are free and open to the public.

Proceeds from the sale of prints and catalogs of the “Photographs from Iraq” exhibition will be used to help fund MCCC’s Jesse Hodges Memorial Veterans Scholarship, awarded annually to a student veteran.

For Quigg, the exhibit is a way to help her fellow veterans and to spotlight the often overlooked civilian face of the Iraqi war.

Montgomery County Community College continuously supports its military students with ongoing programs for active military and veteran students. The college earned the designation “Military Friendly School” for two consecutive years from G.I. Jobs magazine, a resource publication for veterans and military personnel.

For more information about the Iraq Photography Exhibition, contact Walter Plotnick at wplotnic@mc3.edu or Galleries Director Holly Cairns at hcairns@mc3.edu.

Gallery hours are Monday through Thursday from 8 a.m. to 9:30 p.m.; and Friday from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The gallery is closed weekends.