Local photographer’s images of conflict earn place in Leica Gallery

War is not just a concept for photographer Cheryl Hatch. It’s a reality she’s captured on film for decades, from Somalia to Iraq. Hatch’s desire to the capture the realities of conflict has taken her around the world, and now, some of that work is being displayed at the elite Leica Gallery in Germany.

In April, Hatch’s documentation of life after the war of independence in Eritrea will be shown. Her work focused on the effects of war on women, and subsequent battles between Eritrea and Ethiopia.

Coincidentally, the exhibit comes on the heels of today’s International Women’s Day, commemorated by the United Nations and celebrated in many countries as a time to honor the history and contributions of women.

Hatch, who lived in Africa and the Middle East for years covering conflict, said she’s been fascinated by the war in Eritrea, especially the prominent role of women as soldiers.

“They had this 30-year war for liberation, with 3 million Eritreans to 60 million Ethiopians,” Hatch said. “So (Eritrea) had to have women in the military — not just as cannon fodder, but they had vital roles: Battalion commanders, tank commanders, nurses, across the board.”

In 1991, Eritreans won their independence, and conducted elections in 1993. Although Hatch had never traveled to Eritrea, she followed news events happening there. Then in 1996, she read an article in The New York Times about the female soldiers of Eritrea who were struggling to return to their everyday lives.

“I saw some parallels with my own life, being a woman journalist and covering conflict for a number of years. I see it even more now,” she said. “The thing that struck me was the part about missing war. I thought, ‘How bad can it be that you actually want to go back into combat?’ But I started seeing parallels with Rosie the Riveter and the women working in factories and the Zapatista women who were part of the revolutionary movement (in Mexico).”

The story struck a chord, and started the wheels turning for a photojournalism project that would focus on an unusual but compelling topic.

“Women’s liberation with war, I thought that was sort of twisted and fascinating. And at the same time for me, having covered conflict in Iraq and Somalia and Mozambique, it was like, ‘Does any good come from war? Could you find any silver lining to war?’ ”

So, Hatch applied for and received a Pew Fellowship in 1999 that provided the support she needed to pursue the project.

“For me, having been an independent photographer my entire career, always putting up my own money and going on spec, this was — whew! They handed me money and an office and unlimited international phone privileges. It was like I’d died and gone to heaven.”

In Washington, D.C., Hatch made as many connections to Eritrea as she could, interviewing taxi drivers and hotel maids as well as academics from the East African nation.

“When I start a project, I have an idea, but I don’t like to have a preconceived approach,” she said. “I don’t want to know what I’m going to find, I want to go and find.”

Once in Eritrea, Hatch was joined by a translator named Ruth Wuldo, an Eritrean woman who had never spent much time in the country. She was discovering her homeland at the same time as Hatch.

Wuldo had no training as a journalist, but went everywhere with Hatch, even to the front during one of the battles that occasionally breaks out between the neighboring countries.

“We drove up in the Land Rover, and literally, I stuck one foot out and then the other and I was tying laces on my hiking boots when I heard ‘Whurrrrrrr’ and a mortar landed right behind our vehicle and everybody scattered. I just grabbed my camera and soldiers came running and said, ‘Get in the bunker.’ ”

Instead of being scared, Hatch’s reaction was one of frustration because you can’t shoot photos from a bunker. She thought it was a bad omen, but eventually, she was able to spend time with female soldiers on the front lines.

Hatch, who was born on an American military base in Germany, found that being the daughter of a soldier helped her relate to the fighters she met.

Since the war, things have changed for Eritrean women in a variety of ways. They’re marrying later, pursuing an education and are allowed to own businesses and have representation in government.

Hatch spent time with factory workers in a female-owned textile mill and sat with female soldiers getting an education about HIV and condom use, once a forbidden topic. She also attended weddings, once an arranged affair but now more likely done between people in love.

Asgedet Stefanos, assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts in Boston and a native Eritrean, said the war was a double-edged sword for women in Eritrea. New avenues were opened to women following the war, including political and work opportunities unheard of in the conservative society. The price, however, was putting their bodies in harm’s way.

“It also means they had to be sacrificing their lives,” she said.

That doesn’t mean that society completely shifted after the war, Stefanos said. Some women found it easier than others to simply slip back into the lives they had before becoming soldiers.

It is in the next generation, the daughters of the first female soldiers, that Stefanos expects to see the most change.

“There, you see differences,” she said. “They are less likely to accept a lot of things their mothers did.”

Stefanos, who worked with Hatch upon her return from Eritrea, was impressed with what she saw in Hatch’s work. Unlike many Western photographers, who focused on a small elite group of soldiers, Stefanos said Hatch sought women whose voices aren’t often heard.

“What I find her work shows is an outsider’s view, and yet it’s very close-up,” Stefanos said. “She lets them be and show who they are. It’s a very empowering thing.”

Hatch said there is still much, at least to Western eyes, that can be done to improve the situation for women in Eritrea. For instance, female genital mutilation, a cultural practice in the country, is still practiced on 85 percent of the young women there, and is supported by older generations of women. However, some young women are fighting back, trying to prevent the practice.

“In the end, it did show that in spite of all the horror (of war), some forward civil progress was made for women,” Hatch said.

Old Eritrean proverbs used to compare women to donkeys. This is no longer the case. Now, female fighters are depicted on murals in the capital city of Asmara, wearing the shorts and Afros of the first Eritrean independence fighters.

Hatch returned to the United States after her project and worked for the Associated Press for a time. She has now returned to Corvallis, where she had attended Oregon State University and worked for the Gazette-Times.

She works for OSU and continues to do independent projects. She plans on traveling to Germany for the Leica show, and hopes the project sheds new light on a complex subject.

“Early on, covering conflict, I realized that the thing people need to know is that we are all basically the same, no matter our religion, no matter our ethnicity, no matter the color of our skin, we’re all fundamentally the same.

“We have the same basic needs, wants and desires. The Iraqi dad just wants to see his daughter get married, the Iraqi mom wants her kids to grow up healthy. The taxi cab driver in New York, the taxi cab driver in Iraq and the taxi cab driver in the Philippines, they want the same thing.”