TORONTO, September 17, 2007 -- Canadian photographer V. Tony Hauser's exhibit Living with Landmines, a collection of 16 life-sized portraits of children who survived landmines, begins a week-long stay at York University today.

The portraits will be on display in Vari Hall Rotunda today and in the Scott Library Reading Room for the rest of the week (Sept. 18-21) – the first stop in the eastern part of a cross-Canada tour. An expert panel discussion on landmines will follow the exhibit opening today.

Hauser had been documenting how people in India and Cambodia cope with HIV/AIDS when he first encountered the children, living in a residence associated with the Aki Ra Landmines Museum in Siem Reap, Cambodia. Moved by their courage, he returned to photograph them in May 2006.

In the artist's statement that accompanies his new photographic exhibition, Living with Landmines, Hauser describes his sense of frustration: "I feel helpless because I'm not a medicine man or a priest, capable of mending a body or saving a soul. I'm a photographer. All I do is observe the worlds around me, and most often I seek to find beauty in everything at which I point my camera."

Right: "TOL". Tol lost his leg when he and his friends picked up a pineapple mine. It exploded, killing three of the friends instantly. A girl nearby lost her arm. Tol was the first landmine survivor to live with Aki Ra's family at the Landmines Museum, where he helps with the daily chores. Tol attends the Khmer school in Siem Reap. He is a talented muscian and hopes to study medicine.

It has been a decade since almost two-thirds of the world's nations came to Canada to sign The Ottawa Convention, a treaty to stop the manufacture and use of landmines. While nations such as Cambodia have been at peace, the threat of landmines still exists, hidden in the landscape.

Sponsored by the York Centre for International & Security Studies (YCISS), the exhibit opening will be followed by a panel discussion that will examine the Ottawa Convention. Titled, "The Ottawa Convention: Reflections on Ten Years of Mine Action", YCISS has invited two landmines experts to present on the landmines ban.

• Leon (Lee) Sigal is director of the Northeast Asia Cooperative Security Project at the SSRC in New York, and has also served in the US State Department. He recently published Negotiating Minefields: The Landmines Ban in American Politics and will speak on that theme at the seminar.
• Robert (Bob) Lawson is senior policy adviser, Human Security Policy Division, at the Department of Foreign Affairs & International Trade in Ottawa. He was a member of the Canadian team negotiating the Ottawa Convention, and then spent several years in the office of the Landmines Ambassador working on its implementation and universalisation. Lawson also co-edited To Walk Without Fear: The Global Movement to Ban Landmines. He will reflect on those experiences at the seminar.

The seminar will take place from 2:30 to 4:30pm today, in 280 York Lanes and is open to the community. For more information on the exhibit and seminar, visit the YCISS Web site.

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