10 - Viva Lewes

foCus oN:
sefura holding a portrait of her husband
by Jenny matthews (2009)
Can you tell us the circumstances surrounding
this picture? I’ve been going to Afghanistan since
1988 either for aid organisations or on self-funded
trips. I’m particularly interested on the effect conflict
has on women. I was working for Care International
in Kabul, visiting widows. Kabul is a city of widows,
who find themselves in a very difficult position, because
they have lost their breadwinner, and there’s a
stigma against women working. The caption of this
picture reads ‘The Taliban killed my husband in 2001.
He was in the military. I have four daughters and two
sons. Five months after I was widowed, my daughter,
who had been engaged since she was three months old,
disappeared. She was 16. The family of her fiancé was
furious. They demanded two daughters in her place.
There was nothing I could do.’
Your photographs are being exhibited in the former home of Lee Miller, who was herself a war
photographer. Was she a big influence? Her photographs were very strong, and she was working at a
time when it was a hundred times more difficult to do this sort of job than it is now. Using a film camera
meant she had to develop all her photos, of course, and as a result the shots are much more considered.
But I’m actually much more amazed about the dispatches she wrote from the front. It’s incredible that
in such an atmosphere, she was able to be so coherent. She must have been such an extremely feisty
young woman. She could have had a very easy life but she went off and chose the hard route.
It’s rare for women to cover wars… More and more women are doing so, but I think they do it a little
bit differently, going for the quieter detail behind the scenes. I think the Guardian’s Maggie O’Kane
was a big influence on me, in the way she examined the lives of women during wartime. Behind the
‘bang bang’ there’s a hell of a lot going on, that doesn’t otherwise get understood.
Which conflict zones have you been to? Nicaragua, Rwanda, The Congo, Afghanistan, the Libyan
border, Iraq, Iran, Sri Lanka, Uganda, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Gaza, Palestine… do you want me to go on?
Rwanda was particularly harrowing. I went there just before the genocide and afterwards I went back to
find the people I had photographed, and found they were all dead. I returned to the country many times
after that collecting the testimonies and photographing survivors.
To keep going back to places like that shows remarkable courage. Is it… addictive? I suppose you
could say it’s addictive, if that’s the right word. It’s interesting to look at what happened to Lee Miller.
After all that conflict she witnessed in WW2, she went to rural Sussex, and had to try to reinvent herself.
The only alternative to this is propelling yourself towards the next big thing.
What picture would you hang on your desert island palm tree? Picasso’s Guernica. It’s a bit obvious
but what could be more amazing, and a stark reminder of life beyond the idyll?
Jenny Matthews Women and War, Farley Farm House Barn Gallery, Chiddingly, Aug 7th-Sept 4th, open
days 7th, 21st Aug and Sept 4th. For info on tours ring 01825 872856.
W W W. V i Va L E W E s . C o M
p H o t o g r a p H y
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