Women and War

War is overwhelmingly a male occupation. Yet its victims are often civilians -- many among them women and children. In Women and War Jenny Matthews gives a voice to this silent majority of casualties through a series of deeply moving -- sometimes disturbing -- photographs of human subjects in the midst of war and conflict wherever they are found. Twenty years of visual and written diaries tell of human struggle around the world -- in Nicaragua, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, Burma, Chechnya, Haiti, the United Kingdom, Guatemala, and Sudan, among others. Jenny Matthews documents women and the roles they play -- avoiding, coping, confronting, participating -- as well as the emotions they experience: anger, fear, despair, joy, hope, terror. Jenny Matthews records the stories of the people she photographs, both visually and with written diaries that underscore the immediacy of the images, drawing connections between the different countries. Above all her book is a celebration of the lives of women, and how their role as actual or potential mothers changes their relationship to war. Jenny Matthews, freelance photographer and filmmaker, chronicles the devastating effects of armed conflict on women. Her work has been exhibited by Oxfam and Womankind Worldwide, and has appeared in magazines such as Mother Jones.