<\/span>Matthews is clearly under no illusion that women can be killers and torturers; nowhere was this point more forcefully driven home than in Rwanda. But for the most part, what women do during wartime\u2013and therefore what Matthews faithfully documents\u2013is to continue to do everything they do in peacetime, but in more difficult circumstances. <\/p>\n
Images of women as they prepare food, wash clothes, grow crops, give birth, raise children: this is classic Matthews territory. And when, as a result of warfare, women are raped, widowed, predeceased by their children, contract HIV or give birth to deformed babies poisoned by chemical warfare, Matthews records this too, with the same sense of humanity and dignity.
?People tell you the most terrible, terrible things as a photographer and all you can do is take a picture,? she says, ?but at least then I can show them to people and say that I think it\u2019s wrong. It\u2019s about how you change things. Issues like rape and HIV as a consequence of war are hard to represent. The last thing these women need is someone taking their picture. But if it doesn\u2019t happen it\u2019s like it doesn\u2019t exist.?<\/p>\n
One photograph, taken at the Piscina Camp in Tirana, Albania, shows the hands of two women clasped together. Their faces are not visible, but their long shadows create a silhouette of understanding. The accompanying text informs us the women at the refugee camp are being offered counselling and, if necessary, abortions after being raped in Kosovo. Repeated readings of this book uncover a revealing subtext in the lingua franca of the human hand. Women\u2019s hands: weaving; washing; baking bread. Hands, cradling a gun, or a baby. Hands reclaiming power, hands united in solidarity or in grief.<\/p>\n
Some of the women photographed here have no hands, and theirs are among the saddest stories. Take Taus Belashanova, who lost her hands in a rocket attack during the first Chechen war. Or Consolee, one of the few survivors of the Rwandan genocide, who had her right hand and most of her left hand cut off in a Hutu machete attack. We are confronted with 16-year-old Adamsay Bangura, whose home is the Amputee Camp in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Captured in Port Loko, after being \u201cchopped\u201d by rebel fighters, this young woman then witnessed her 2-year-old baby boy being axed to death.<\/p>\n
And yet … from the depths of human tragedy, the indomitable spirit of women can still rise to the surface. To study Matthews\u2019 pictures is to know that she has an intrinsic understanding of this spirit. Maybe it is due in part to her own femininity (undiminished despite protracted proximity to bang-bang), or maybe it\u2019s because she has witnessed it and captured it on film countless times over the last two decades. From Kosovo to Palestine, the desire to paint on a smile for instant empowerment is the same. \u201cLipstick is simply the cheapest way to cheer yourself up,\u201d says Matthews. \u201cI\u2019ve never seen so much red lipstick and nail varnish as during the war in Bosnia. It\u2019s an act of defiance.\u201d And if defiance is the public face of despair, then women the world over have at least one coping mechanism for grief.<\/p>\n
The pictures chosen by Matthews for this collection resonate with a rare compassion. They serve to remind us that there is no glory in war, but after all the evils of the world have flown from Pandora\u2019s war chest, there is one thing left: hope. <\/p>\n
Max Houghton<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"![\"Women](\"https:\/\/www.foto8.com\/live\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/10\/women_cover.jpg\" "\\"Women")
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