For much of the past decade, Portland photographer Jim Lommasson has photographed objects. For his long-running project What We Carried, he collaborated with refugees from Iraq and Syria to take pictures of items they carried with them on their journey to the United States. He made prints of these photos, which his collaborators then annotated by hand, describing the significance of the pictured object. He continued the project with survivors of other conflicts, including the Holocaust and genocides in Armenia, Cambodia, and Darfur.
Lommasson says he'd long thought that his form of collaborative storytelling would be applicable to street life in Portland, but thought the "high percentage of never seeing people again" would make such a project challenging. Then he was invited to talk to a poetry writing group at the headquarters of Street Roots, the Portland street newspaper, and found an eager group of collaborators. Suddenly, he says, "I felt integrated into a community I'd always seen from a distance."
Lommasson calls the resulting series of images What I Carry. Images from the series are currently on display at Central Library in downtown Portland. The stories run the gamut from funny to frightening, but they're all humanizing.
The point of the project, Lommasson says, is "to help dispel preconceived notions and stereotypes about many unhoused members of our community and serve as a poignant reminder that any of us could find ourselves in need of shelter, should one or two circumstances in our lives shift."
Meanwhile, What I Carry continues to grow; currently, Lommasson is working with Central Library patrons to share more stories.
"What I Carry" will be on display at the Collins Gallery at Central Library (801 SW 10th Ave., third floor, Portland) through March 15. A second exhibition of images will run at PLACE (735 NW 18th Ave., Portland) May 1 through May 30.
Cards are beautiful because they are a universal language.
At my most beautiful I carry cards and books and books are heavy.
On a more intimate level I carry cards because they remind me of my friend and sister Bre: Me and her are twins.
And I miss her deeply.
I carried a copy of The Creative Act by Rick Rubin with me when I had a backpack.
I carry my phone. I carry stories. On a more sprawling level I think I and everyone else carries the universe inside them and it is each individual's lifework and privilege to tell their stories and explore the universe inside self and outside in the world.
I used to play cards.
I’ll play more cards tonight.
—Flash
The text on the back of the photo reads, "For a long good memory to dear children Rakhmil and Feni from parents Moisey and Khoimi Shpektor. 1918, Russia."
These two solemn faced folks are my great grandparents Moisey (pronounced Moi-se) and Khoimi (pronounced Naomi). It is from Russia in 1918. It was their last picture taken and sent to my grandmother and her husband. (Feni pronounced Fanny and Rakhmil pronounced Rudolph.) They were in an arranged marriage and immigrated to Canada. I say it is their last picture because they were executed by the Nazis during the First World War and the advance into Russia. They’re Jewish. Originally this picture is of two, one was without writing, the original had the writing in Yiddish. My mother would not let me take it without having it deciphered. Hence the message above is the translation. To me, to have kept this safe while I was homeless was monumental but indeed without question. It is such a small piece of that part of my family’s history. I see my face in her face, I see my daughters' faces in hers as well. It is without any doubt a long good memory…
—Branwyn Carver
I'm compelled to begin, well, at the beginning. My parents met at 13 years old, married at 19. I was born in Long Beach, California, when my parents were both 21. My dad in the Coast Guard, my mom stayed at home to have and raise me. We moved to Bakersfield, where I had a little sister, Karen, join the crew in 1971. Dad is William Dean, or "W.D." And mom is Judy. Back in the early 1970s I began riding bicycles in the hills. In 1974, my dad took me to my first organized BMX race. I got third-place trophy. For the next few years I was a star BMX racer. Until my parents' divorce in 1979. That's when my BMX career tanked. It was also when I began to hang out with the kind of "bad kids." Around 6th grade, I received a drum set for Christmas. It was only a year before I started to play music with kids in the neighborhood who had started to get guitars and basses for Christmas or birthdays. And so my career with my craft of writing and playing music began. Also I played baseball, soccer, as well as music in the school band and privately, so it seems I was a very talented young man. So everyone always told me, "You have a lot of natural ability." I was intelligent to a key, and a complete extrovert comfortable speaking to multitudes. I've had a vicious cycle I have always had to deal with. I do brilliant things, music, school (never got a C in university), work (I am one of only a few who can turn an empty room into a fully functioning clinical laboratory, state-licensed, gaining revenue from auto billing computers to insurance companies for revenue). So fast-forward. Being a surfer since 6th grade has been a spiritual food in which I've partaken for most of my life. Now I am wracked with physical problems, five orthopedics, and now I for most of my life can't even walk. Can't walk? No benefits, no help, no nothing!!! And why? On the street, robbed, ridiculed, hated. How much longer before I looooooz it?
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