The Shifting Sands of Somalia

Audrey Gottlieb
January 9 – February 28, 2025

About This Exhibition

“In 1993, the year of the infamous “Blackhawk Down” in Mogadishu, Somalia, I was the official photographer for the United Nations Operation in Somalia (UNOSOM). I traveled via armed vehicle convoys, helicopters, military transport planes and armored personnel carriers. I photographed meetings of dignitaries, grip-and-grin handshakes, Somali warlords and war ladies, multinational peacekeepers and ordinary Somali citizens. I lived in a container next to an airstrip on a compound without electricity or running water. I carried two Nikon cameras – one for slides, one for film. I dedicate my photographs in this show to the memory of those thousands of innocent civilians and peacekeepers who died before, during and after my short stay in this war-worn African country.”

About the Artist

Audrey Gottlieb, documentary photographer, is best known for her work on American immigration in the borough of Queens, New York. A graduate of Temple University, Gottlieb has worked as a photographer, educator and researcher. She joined the United Nations in 1973, serving in public information, photography, editing, and translation positions in New York, Geneva, Nicosia, Nairobi and Mogadishu.

Gottlieb’s exhibitions include the Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego; Center for Creative Photography, Tucson; Ellis Island Immigration Museum; George Eastman House Museum, Rochester; Center for African-American History and Culture at the Smithsonian Institution; Jewish Museum, NYC; Maine Jewish Museum; Wiesenthal Center Beit Hashoah Museum of Tolerance, Los Angeles; Jimmy Carter Library Museum, Atlanta; Queens Museum; Long Island Museum; Ogunquit Arts Collaborative, Maine; and Center for Documentary Studies, Duke University. Her work is in private and public collections, including the Museum of Chinese in the Americas, Griffin Museum of Photography, libraries and historical societies. She is a member of the Society for Photographic Education and the American Photographic Archive Group.

Gottlieb was born in Neptune, New Jersey and currently resides in York, Maine.