On first appearance, Jenny Matthews is a short petite woman with a soft British accent and a chuckle.
However, Matthews who spoke last Thursday in the Wechsler Theater, has presented the struggles of women through her lens from the crisis in Afghanistan to massacres and displacement of people in Mozambique to women in Iraq.
The freelance photographer and journalist, spoke about her new book "Women and War" which is a 20 year visual diary of war zones from a women's perspective and the issue dealing with women in time of conflict.
"This is a record that is emphasizing women's life who are still at the edge of the picture," Matthews said.
The concept went far back as 1982, according to Matthews who has been documenting different women in times of conflict, Matthews has been to Iraq, Gaza, Nicaragua, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, Chechnya and Sudan to just name a few.
"I didn't start out only focusing on women," Matthews said, who started her career at age 30. "I only noticed about 10 years ago that the concept was common in my photos."
Among Matthews experiences, she describes stories of a beauty salon in Gaza of women looking anxious at their cell phones would ring and hearing a voice telling them that their son has been recruited for the army or dead, in El Salvador, widows put together photo albums of those dead as records to find the disappeared ones, and a woman in Afghanistan who for the first time used cosmetics since the Taliban regime.
"Each photo and story is different and I have been privileged as a journalist to be on the outside looking in and be able to walk away," Matthews said. "There's always a danger in whatever you do, you could get knocked down by a bus. But it is important that you don't make life dangerous for other people [who live there.]"
Many of her photos that include more graphic detailed images of women from being sex workers, rape, mothers and military leaders, portray human injustices and tragedy.
War is a male occupation yet the victims are civilians who are mostly women and children, Matthews said.
"Some photographers try to take iconic pictures ... a picture of misery is rewarded but I don't know how else you can do it tastefully," Matthews said. "I can't change the world myself ... but there are one out of 50 people doing the same work just slightly different."
Matthews will be revisiting Iraq later this year to photograph the surroundings, revisit places she has been before and look for those women she has met in the past.
"You have to tell a story a certain way and of interest in order to communication the passion you feel for it," Matthews said. "You have the give people the opportunity so they might respond to it."
Sponsored by the Center for Social Media, the center showcases and analyzes media for public knowledge, conducts research and publishes its findings and brings to campus film festivals, panels and speakers on array of fields from photography to filmmaking.
