About Me
Jim Lommasson is a freelance photographer and storyteller based in Portland, Oregon. He was awarded the prestigious Dorothea Lange–Paul Taylor Prize from The Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University for his debut book, Shadow Boxers: Sweat, Sacrifice and The Will To Survive In American Boxing Gyms, (2005). His second book is Oaks Park Pentimento: Hidden Treasures Revealed, about layered paintings on the Oaks Park Carousel, (2009). His third book, Exit Wounds: Soldiers’ Stories – Life After Iraq and Afghanistan, (2015) and its accompanying traveling exhibition, is about American veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, focusing on their lives post deployment. Stories of Survival: Object. Image. Memory. with genocide and Holocaust survivors was a collaboration with Illinois Holocaust Museum, (2018). What We Carried: Fragments and Memories from the Cradle of Civilization is about Iraqi and Syrian refugees who fled to the U.S. (2019)
Stories of Survival and Remembrance: A Call to Action for Genocide Prevention, was exhibited at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City in the Spring of 2023.
What i Carry: A collaborative photo+writing storytelling project with Portland’s Street Community was exhibited in 2025 at The Multnomah County Central Library, PLACE Galeria, The Oregon Historical Society, and KAMP Grizzly.
Lommasson's ongoing collaborative storytelling project, What We Carried: Fragments and Memories from the Cradle of Civilization was exhibited at the Ellis Island Museum of Immigration and the Arab American National Museum. Stories of Survival: Object. Image. Memory. was first exhibited at the Illinois Holocaust Museum and has traveled to the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum; The Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum; Maltz Museum; and the Holocaust Museum Houston. Exit Wounds: Soldiers’ Stories – Life After Iraq and Afghanistan was exhibited at the New American Art Union and Blue Sky Gallery. In collaboration with The Immigrant Story are the following exhibits: To Bear Witness: Extraordinary Lives at the Oregon Jewish Museum; DREAMs Deferred (DACA); I Am an American at The Oregon Historical Society; and I Am My Story: Voices of Hope at PLACE; and I Lived to Tell the World: Stories from Survivors of Holocaust, Genocide, and the Atrocities of War, exhibited at the Patricia Valian Reser Center for the Creative Arts in 2025.
Lommasson's work is included in permanent collections including The Library of Congress, George Eastman Museum, SF MoMA, Portland Art Museum, Yale University, Reed College, University of Washington, University of Oregon, New Orleans Museum of Art, Hallie Ford Museum, University of Denver, Ohio University, University of California Irvine, Museum of Fine Art St. Petersburg, University of Colorado, Baylor University, and Emory University.