Portrait artist Daniel Heyman presented his work titled "Bearing Witness: Stories from the Front Lines" during a gallery talk April 23 in Zilhka Gallery.
For the past four years, Heyman has traveled to Jordan and Turkey to meet with former detainees, paint their portraits, and record their testimonies. This exhibition includes painted and printed portraits of Iraqis who were imprisoned at Abu Ghraib and other sites in Iraq. Each portrait includes first-person testimony gathered by the artist while sitting in on interviews between the Iraqi victims and their American lawyers in Istanbul and Amman from 2006 to 2008. Additional work by Heyman include portraits of African American imprisoned fathers, African American Philadelphians, and portraits of U.S. veterans. Heyman, who received a Guggenheim Fellowship for 2010, holds degrees from Dartmouth College and the University of Pennsylvania, and currently teaches at Swarthmore and the Rhode Island School of Design. A student studies Heyman’s portraits in the main gallery. (Photos by Olivia Bartlett Drake)
Olivia Drake
Mike Mavredakis
Editorial Staff
Sarah Parke