A Woman’s War documents the lives of women engaged in recent conflicts worldwide, as well as their struggle for justice, rights, and identity as female fighters.
Women have played key roles in recent conflicts, serving as combatants, nurses, organizers, spies, and more. War’s end, however, is not the end of their struggle, with many left with the dual burden of confronting battle scars while reconstructing their families’ lives. Perhaps most egregiously, many have found their conflict experiences to be a source of shame, rather than honor.
Over the past three years, I have documented the stories of 116 women in five countries: female revolutionaries of Egypt’s recent political uprising, women on all sides of the 1992-1995 Bosnian War, female members of the North Vietnamese Army, Protestant and Catholic women of the decades-long Troubles in Northern Ireland, and female freedom fighters of the 1971 Liberation War in Bangladesh.
Though the locations and conflicts vary greatly, this work reveals concerns common across time and place. In coupling the portraits and testimonies of these female fighters, A Woman’s War presents a new narrative on modern conflict, told through the words of women actively engaged in it. Each woman has a powerful story of trauma and survival, of hatred and belonging, of forgiveness and peace. Theirs are histories ,their families, communities and nations have yet to confront, yet whose documentation and acknowledgement is vital if these countries – and the women who gave them so much – are to find justice and peace.
Elizabeth D. Herman is a Boston-born freelance photographer and researcher currently based in New York. She spent last year in Bangladesh as a Fulbright Fellow, researching how politics influence the writing of national histories in textbooks. She has spent the past three years working on A Woman’s War, taking the project to countries on three continents. The work was named a 2013 Blue Earth Sponsored Project, a 2011 Finalist of The Aftermath Project, a 2011 Finalist of the Livingston Awards, a 2011 Top Finalist of the FotoVisura Spotlight, and shortlisted for the 2013 and 2011 Lucie Foundation Scholarship. Elizabeth was also granted the 2012 PNDP Tim Hetherington Award to expand the project to Bosnia this past summer.
Since moving back to the U.S. last fall, Elizabeth has been freelancing for a number of national and international news outlets, and is currently the International Picture Intern at TIME Magazine. Elizabeth graduated from Tufts University with a B.A. in Political Science and Economics in 2010. While at Tufts she received Highest Thesis Honors in Political Science for her research on representations of 9/11 in history textbooks worldwide. She now serves on the Student Advisory Board of Tufts Institute for Global Leadership’s new Program for Narrative & Documentary Practice, founded and directed by Gary Knight.
Her research and photography have been featured in The New York Times, TIME, The Guardian, GlobalPost, NPR, Jezebel, and The Daily Beast, among others. Her work has been exhibited in a number of group shows in the U.S., as well as at a solo show at United Photo Industries in NY and at Shadhona Studios in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Elizabeth was recently named one of the Jezebel 25 by Gawker Media.
