JESÚS ABAD COLORADO Mutilated Christ, Bojayá 2002

Jesús Abad Colorado, Ricardo Rondón Chamorro for Las 2 Orillas

Kate Horne’s documentary film The Witness: Cain & Abel depicts the lifework of Jesús Abad Colorado, a photojournalist whose camera has captured the struggles that Colombia has endured in the last twenty-five years.

Abad Colorado’s pictures have immortalized the profound pain and suffering of a country torn apart by social injustices. His images are rooted in the violent, yet heartbreaking reality of a civil war in Colombia that has overwhelmed the country for more than five decades.

In Colombia, like the biblical story of Cain and Abel, the civil war mirrors a senseless quarrel between siblings. Moreover, the social turmoil has been a consequence of injustices inflicted by wealthy landowners, multinational corporations, drug lords and corrupt politicians who have subdued the general population and taken away their land and rights.

This is the real tragedy in Colombia: people in rural areas have been forced to abandon everything and compelled to migrate towards metropolitan areas where there are scarce possibilities of having a better future.

JESÚS ABAD COLORADO Machuca Massacre, Segovia 1998

JESÚS ABAD COLORADO Mourning, Quibdó 2002

The subjects of Abad Colorado’s pictures are the true victims of the Colombian civil war. Whether they are civilians, soldiers, paramilitaries or guerilla militants, his images don’t polarize the conflict but rather humanize it.

As eloquently expressed by Abad Colorado “…sometimes when there are discussions about armed conflict, it’s forgotten that it affects an entire society and not a particular group. My photographic work talks especially about the countryside, but there are also pictures of the city, in a country where we should die of old age. Hopefully these images, which are a claim to memory, a manifesto against oblivion and a calligraphy of hope, will help us understand that war is a defeat for everyone”.

The Migrant Caravan by Pieter Ten Hoopen

The Zero Tolerance immigration policy established by Donald Trump’s presidency in 2018 was implemented to curtail the migrant caravan coming from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

This caravan was made up of people seeking asylum and fleeing from the devastating poverty and unrelenting violence in their countries of origin. The World Press Photo Story of the year The Migrant Caravan by Pieter Ten Hoopen portrays the vicissitudes of immigrants heading towards the US.

The aftermath of the massive detentions of these Central American immigrants in the US – Mexican border, led to the separation of nearly 3,000 children from their parents. The process of reuniting these children with their families has been a difficult endeavor and sadly an impossible task in many cases. It is a disgrace that American immigration authorities victimized children, a gut-wrenching testimony of this transgression is evidenced by the World Press Photo Video winner of the year by Univision News.

The Migrant Caravan by Pieter Ten Hoopen

The Migrant Caravan by Pieter Ten Hoopen

The Migrant Caravan by Pieter Ten Hoopen

This year the World Press Photo has awarded several stories related with the migrant caravan and the vicious separation of children from their parents. These images bear witness of the social injustice that prevails in the current American administration. The lack of organization and neglect of the Zero Tolerance policy enforced, reflects the discrimination displayed towards poor immigrants seeking asylum in the United States.

We can only hope that these vile policies which separate innocent children from their parents will never happen again, it is immoral. No child’s heart should ever be broken to satisfy the shallow political aspirations of an incompetent government.

MARY DAGUE by Michael Stokes

STEPHEN HANDLEY by Michael Stokes

Before seeing Stokes’ photographs one might have a preconceived notion of his work as a gruesome spectacle, yet as soon as you approach his images you are taken aback by the sculptural beauty of his subjects.

It is remarkable how Stokes’ pictures transcend the morbid curiosity of looking at amputees and become an artistic proclamation of the human anatomy. Furthermore, his lens is capable of redeeming the soldiers by acknowledging their honor and sacrifice with a dignifying gaze that humanizes us as spectators, removing the veil of uneasiness and denial which characterizes our behavior when we shy away from confronting suffering.

In a culture where the human body oscillates either from being exploited and objectified or regarded as a source of shame, these images empower the subjects by making them proud protagonists of an artistic mise-en-scène. Their bodies indeed mirror the horrors of war, but at the same time elevate their spirit with creative freedom and beauty.

Although Michael Stokes’ photographic work on wounded veterans does not come across as a manifesto, it does create awareness about the gut-wrenching consequences of war on landmine victims. The improvised explosive devices have caused death and suffering the world over. Whether the victims be American veterans who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, Colombian soldiers or Angolan civilians, the casualties of wars driven by political interests have shattered the lives of many young people.

ANTHONY BORGES by Michael Avedon

MISSY JENKINS SMITH by Michael Avedon

After reading the article in the New York magazine titled School Shootings written by journalists Jared Soule and Amelia Schonbek with a photo portfolio by Michael Avedon one can only wonder.

Soule and Schonbek’s article begins with the phrase “Americans have short memories.” Well this article reminds us not only the tragic deaths of the victims at school shootings but also the stories of its many survivors.

Twenty-seven courageous people give a testimony of their experience as a victim of a school shooting in the United States. They do not only bear their souls by resorting to a painful exercise of memory but reveal their physical scars by posing in front of the fearless lens of photographer Michael Avedon.

Beyond the political debate about gun control in America, the current concern should be the need to avoid the amnesia following the initial news frenzy and the week-long aftershock when a new school shooting unfolds. There is a need to humanize the terror of such tragic events and give a face and a voice to the suffering of real victims. Our indifference is not only the proof of the pathological behavior we have assumed regarding violence as a society but also reveals our fear that one day a tragedy of such dimensions might hit too close to home.

Soule and Schonbek unveil an interesting fact: all the testimonies of the survivors of school shootings mentioned that the experience seemed surreal, until they realized that what they were living was really happening.

NOLAN BRADY by Michael Avedon

We can only hope for a more promising future for generations to come in this land of opportunity not shattered dreams.

The aforementioned New York Magazine article on School Shootings.

Liboria Rodríguez and Yalitza Aparicio, Peter Hapak for Netflix

Alfonso Cuarón’s film Roma is a personal journey to his childhood memories. It is a painful and visually poetic film which makes a tribute to Liboria “Libo” Rodríguez, his childhood nanny and to all the real-life characters that although might seem invisible on the surface play a radical long-lasting role in our personal lives.

In Cuarón’s own words at the New York Film Festival premiere “[Jorge Luis] Borges talks about how memory is an opaque, shattered mirror, but I see it more as a crack in the wall. The crack is whatever pain happened in the past. We tend to put several coats of paint over it, trying to cover that crack. But it’s still there.”

Liboria Rodríguez and Alfonso Cuarón, Peter Hapak for Netflix