When I initially covered CEPA Gallery’s Odyssey | Warriors Come Home project at The Market Arcade, I wasn’t aware of the various roads that it would ultimately travel. The initiative started as a strategically-inclusive undertaking, curated by photographer Brendan Bannon. The emotion-infused images displayed at the venue were the result of an intensive retreat, where 36 combat veterans were given a chance to visually demonstrate what it meant to them to return to civilian life. Each was given a camera, upon which time they ventured out into an unfamiliar world, to document their immersive experiences.
Now, that same project is on the verge of entering a new public phase, “as part of a larger project that innovatively uses art, literature, and discussion as instruments to address reintegration, disability, mental health, loss and suffering, reconciliation and public memory among returning combat veterans,” per the University at Buffalo.
This new leg of the project entails an exhibit opening March 15, and a community forum on April 3.
“These photographs are a profoundly personal testimony to the impact of war on the people who fight it,” says Bannon. “Stories of war and the challenges of coming home are hard to share and harder yet to understand for people who haven’t been through war.
“These images illuminate those stories of complex courage.”
Along with the impactful images, a UB research team has been working on the program with the Buffalo & Erie County Public Library, Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, Odyssey Project, and the Veterans One-stop Center of Western New York. This was accomplished via a series of discussions that allowed the veterans to further express their feelings pertaining to their daily routines, which are a world apart from their regimented and oft-chaotic days in the military. Adjusting to a “new meaningful life” is not exactly easy – far from it.
With the help of Six discussion facilitators, all veterans themselves, the WNY veterans were able to better relay their feelings per issues involving reintegration, disability, mental health, loss and suffering, reconciliation, and public memory. Now, those intimate discussions will be recounted via a free special event at the Central Library at 1 pm on April 3. In attendance will be the veterans, family members, and a wider audience that will get a better sense of what it means to belong.
The project’s second series of monthly discussions is scheduled to begin in May. Veterans interested in participating can contact the project team.
“Developing a Meaningful Sense of Belonging among Veterans” is funded through a $100,000 grant UB received last year as part of the National Endowment for the Humanities’ “Dialogues on the Experience of War” program, which supports the humanities as a means for U.S. military veterans and others to think more deeply about the issues raised by war and military service. By combining photographic creativity, literature, art, and discussion sessions, the project helps veterans find a new sense of social connection and meaningful belonging after their military service.
“As an anthropologist, I am a story teller. I tell stories of others and stories about the stories of others in hopes of helping make sense of the chaos we call life,” says Vasiliki Neofotistos*, PhD, an associate professor of anthropology in the UB College of Arts and Sciences and the grant’s principal investigator. “This project is very dear to me because it helps veterans to tell and re-tell their own stories by gaining new insight into their military experiences, and to bond through collective reflection around novels, memoirs, films, and art that provide common patterns of deployment and homecoming, while creating a forum for veterans to form networks of support, combat social isolation and bolster their resilience.”
*Neofotistos has been working on the project with co-investigators and UB colleagues Lisa Butler, PhD, an associate professor in the School of Social Work and an expert on the care needs of veterans and their families, and Bonnie Vest, PhD, a medical anthropologist and research associate professor in the Department of Family Medicine in the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, who has expertise in the health and well-being of veteran and military populations. Butler and Vest also co-direct Joining Forces-UB, a project dedicated to veteran-related education and research at UB.
Additional support for the Odyssey Project comes from Higher Ground, the National Endowment for the Arts, Canon and Canon Professional Services, The John R. Oishei Foundation, M&T Bank, and the Buffalo Sabres Foundation. Refreshments during the two series of monthly discussions are provided by UB’s Humanities Institute.
Lead image: Title:2005/2018. Nathan Maybe / Odyssey Project