Photojournalist Mary F. Calvert is committed to using photography to affect meaningful social change and is known for producing work on gender based, human rights issues. Calvert believes that journalists have a duty to shine a light into the deepest recesses of the human experience and provide a mirror for society to examine itself.
Calvert is the 2015 recipient of the National Press Photographers Association, Cliff Edom New America Award, the 2014 recipient of the Alexia Foundation Women’s Initiative Grant and in 2013 was awarded the Canon Female Photojournalist Award at Visa PourL’Image in Perpignan, France for her ongoing project “The Battle Within: Sexual Assault in America’s Military.”
Mary will take the stage on Friday, June 17th at 11 am at LOOK3, Festival of the Photograph for a talk about this project.
NM: You are three years into a long-term project, “Sexual Assault in America’s Military.” Tell us how this project began and why it meant so much to you.
MC: I specialize in under-reported or neglected gender-based human rights issues and that work had taken me around the world. Six years ago I was laid off from my newspaper job and suddenly had to re-invent myself because I no longer had the financial assistance to produce the kind of work I had been doing. Three years ago I was looking for a project to do in the United States and my husband, Joe Eddins (who is also a photographer), suggested that I look into sexual assault in the US military, that it was a terrible problem and no one was doing anything about it. This really surprised me because I had walked the halls of various military installations over 18 years, in my role as an instructor at the DOD Worldwide Military Photographers Workshop. I passed items on bulletin boards offering counseling for sexual assault victims and 24-hour hotline numbers for those seeking assistance. I used to think, “surely that is not happening here,” and as I began my research it became clear that those bulletins were, in fact, a response to an epidemic of abuse in the military. I was so angry and shocked when I read that there were an estimated 26,000 sexual assaults each year in the US military. It was those statistics and the thought of all my friends who serve in the military that gave me the resolve to tell this story.
NM: I recently read that over 50% of reported sexual assaults in the military are men-on-men, yet we seldom hear anything about this abuse. Do the repercussions differ between men reporting on men and women reporting on men? And do you have plans to include men in the project?
MC: Only 5% of women and 1% of men in the military report crimes of sexual assault or seek help for their Military Sexual Trauma. With a 7% conviction rate it is no wonder that 81% of male rape victims never report their assaults. Both male and female service members suffer from high rates of harassment and retaliation. While women often seek comfort from family, friends, therapists and fellow rape survivors, male victims often take between 20-40 years to even acknowledge the crime or talk about the assault with anyone. Before “Don’t Ask, Don’t’ Tell” many were terrified of being discharged from the military for committing a “homosexual” act. I have already begun to add male-on-male survivors to the project.
NM: You’ve experienced bias in your requests to photograph active members of the service and meetings for assaulted personnel, as well as the blocking of your website on certain bases. How does that make you feel?
MC: It doesn’t make me feel bad or scared, it just makes me work harder.
NM: You’re taking the stage at LOOK3 this year. What do you want your audience to take away with them?
MC: It is my job as a journalist to put a human face on the statistics and make people care. It is my intention that the people who view the work come away with awareness and understanding of what is happening right under their noses in the US Military and that they share what they have seen and heard with their friends and family.
NM: Looking at the powerful photos in this series is very emotional, particularly for me as a woman. What can we, the citizenry, do to help?
MC: People have begun to talk about Military Sexual Trauma, rampant rape on college campuses, in sports and in the Catholic Church. I hope that the awareness of these predator’s playgrounds will remove the stigma and shame that haunt victims of sexual assault and stop these crimes from happening in the first place. Instead of teaching women to protect themselves we ought to be talking to the people who are committing these crimes. Where does this devaluation of women begin? Is this a failure of leadership amongst men? I met with a woman who survived multiple rapes in the US Air Force. During our conversation her 14 year-old son spoke up and told me that when he used to be on his school’s track team, his friends would say, “You really raped him” when one of them would win a race. The young man told me that he never really knew what it meant but now that he understood what had happened to his mother, he now knew exactly what it meant. I hope that people do some soul searching and think about the jokes and what they may think of as harmless pithy sayings that are really harmful and de-humanizing to half the population. I do not think this is about political correctness but instead it is about human dignity and respect.
NM: Thank you, Mary, and I look forward to hearing your talk next week at LOOK3.
© 2016 South x Southeast photomagazine, sxsemagazine.com
FESTIVAL
LOOK3
Artist’s Talk: Mary F. Calvert
Friday, June 17, 2016 at 11:00am
The Paramount Theater
215 East Main Street
Charlottesville, VA 22902
United States
Exhibition: Missing in Action: Homeless Female Veterans
June 13 – 19, 2016
Pop Up Gallery (Next to Bank of America)
306 East Main St.
Charlottesville, Virginia
United States
