Der Freundeskreis-Willy-Brandt-Haus e.V. presents the photo exhibition One Person Crying - Women and War. Photography by Marissa Roth.

Opening: Thursday, March 7 at 7:30 p.m.
Free Admission/ Identification requested

Opening Remarks
Gisela Kayser, Freundeskreis Willy-Brandt-Haus
Speakers: Marissa Roth, photographer; Ute Westroem (daughter of Hilde Westroem, portrayed in the exhibition)

"In conjunction with the International Women’s Day, the Freundeskreis Willy-Brand-Haus will present the exhibition One Person Crying - Women and War - Photographs by Marissa Roth. Over a time-span of 28 years, the project led the photographer to numerous countries. It all began unintentionally with her family’s journey to the home of her grandparents in the former Yugoslavia -they were killed in 1942 by Hungarian Fascists- and continued in 1988 with a request by the LA Times to photograph Afghan women refugees. When she accompanied a group of doctors on a medical mission in 1999 to photograph refugees in Albania, she realized that her focus on the immediate and permanent effects of war on women was becoming a recurring theme of her work. She came full circle in the spring of 2012, when Roth traveled to Vietnam for the first time, a place of great personal importance to her. For Roth, Vietnam was her Coming of Age war. She believes that the images she was exposed to during her adolescent years, inspired her to become a photojournalist.

Marissa Roth, born in Los Angeles, USA is a freelance, internationally published photojournalist and documentary photographer. She has worked for many newspapers and magazines such as the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Time and Newsweek. She covered a wide range of topics, from the attempted coup to overthrow the government of the Philippines to the first elections in post communist Hungary, to homelessness in Japan, to the survivors of the chemical disaster of the US company Union Carbide in Bophal, India. Roth was part of the Los Angeles Times team that received the Pulitzer Prize for the best local coverage of the LA riots in 1993. She teaches at various academic institutions, such as UCLA, her alma mater. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions and her photographs are represented in numerous museums and collections. The Museum of Tolerance/Simon Wiesenthal Center houses her permanent exhibition of Witness to Truth - a Portrait series of Holocaust Survivors who volunteer at the Museum. She is currently working on a new book: Infinite Light: A Photographic Meditation on Tibet with a foreword by His Holiness the Dalai Lama."