‘Women, War and Peace’ Exhibition

Directions: After entering the ‘Peace Wing’, turn left up the stairwell, where the exhibition images are displayed from bottom to top of the stairs.

Lifelong Peace campaigner Ifanwy Williams, from Porthmadog

As you ascend the north stairwell, take a few moments to explore the incredibly moving photo exhibition by Lee Karen Stow, ‘Women War and Peace’. Put together in 2016-17 and launched at the Senedd, the exhibition explores women’s perspectives on war through powerful portraits and stories from Wales and across the world.

Lee  is a photojournalist from Yorkshire whose work has been displayed at venues across the world – including Cambridge University and the UN headquarters in New York. She has travelled the world collecting stories of war and peace; the inspiration for her documentary work came from a visit to Sierra Leone in 2007, when she met women displaced by a decade of civil war. Since then she has travelled the world recording the personal stories of women of war and conflict, and women who campaign for peace.

In Lee’s words: “In 2017 Wales for Peace asked me to photograph some of the many women in Wales involved in or affected by war and conflict, along with a fraction of women who have campaigned and who continue to work and hope for peace. The faces on the walls will only be a few examples of the many individuals out there whose stories have yet to be told and shared. We hope this exhibition can begin a conversation about the historic and ongoing presence of war on our lives, and the ongoing search for peace.”

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Lee’s work with Wales for Peace in 2017 also inspired a new generation of young photojournalists, thanks to a linked project between WCIA and Ffotogallery, the national agency for photography in Wales. Lee undertook a workshop with photography students from Whitchurch High school, Cardiff, talking about her work, off the back of which a film was created as the basis for a series of workshops in 6 schools across south Wales, who produced documentary films about peace stories in their communities.

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