Vietnam War Photos On Display At San Juan Islands Art Museum

ACROSS WASHINGTON, WA - From San Juan Islands Museum of Art: We are pleased to announce that the MY WAR: Wartime Photographs by Vietnam Veterans exhibition will be opening at the San Juan Islands Museum of Art on April 5, 2019 Press Release. The museum has a big vision for their programming and community engagement.

They have succeeded in actively engaging local veterans, and will be hosting a parallel exhibition in their North Gallery of photos, writings and artifacts by San Juan County Vietnam veterans. The title for this exhibition is A War Never Ends. This will bring recognition to their actual wartime experiences and honors the men and women who carry the scars and memories of that time. They will also be hosting a series of public events with participation of veterans and support organizations.

MY WAR is an exhibition presenting a collection of personal photographs and poetry by Vietnam veterans, offering an all-but-unexplored viewpoint on that war and the men who fought it. Photographed during the war, the memories for these men are indelibly partnered with their collective experiences, and remain vivid decades later. MY WAR invokes both remembrance and dialogue.

THE PHOTOGRAPHERS

Many of the photographs in this exhibition capture the in-between moments. In some cases, in between a friend’s life and death, in between bombing runs or ground offensives, in between here and there, on the road, in wakeful waiting, worrying and hoping, caught in the tedium of teamwork and down moments while ticking away time.Four decades on, these veterans not only continue to pay dearly—emotionally, physically and psychologically— but the added wound of being welcomed home as social pariahs is a lifelong scar that still complicates memory.

THE PHOTOGRAPHS

These veterans chose to photograph subjects with enduring war themes: the terrain, the camaraderie, the weaponry, the fighting, moments of levity and visual poetry, moments of quiet and signs of life, and its ever-present invisible partner, death.

Photo courtesy of San Juan Islands Museum of Art