Images of Latin American sufferings in Delhi

NEW DELHI - They narrate gut-wrenching tales of immigration, natural disasters, middle-class urban angst and street stage in several Latin American nations. Ten emerging Mexican photographers have brought snapshots of life on the edge in Latin America and the triumphant human spirit in an exhibition here.

The photographs in the exhibition “Resilencia (Resilience)” at the Instituto Cervantes - the Spanish Cultural Centre - are like documentary clips shot in series.

The photographs were chosen from submissions by 342 photographers by a special PhotoEspania (a competitive festival of photographs in Spain) jury and exhibited at the Spanish Cultural Centres in Mexico City, Lima and Madrid in 2009.

The exhibition that arrived in the capital Sep 19 will remain here till Oct 4.

“When we speak of Latin America, we think of stereotypes like folklore images, local customs and breathtaking landscapes. This exhibition seeks to distance itself from the cliches and common places in Latin America,” Spanish Cultural Institute director Oscar Pujol told IANS.

“The photographs are a commentary on certain contemporary realities in central America,” he added.

Every photograph is bound to a common emotion, Pujol said.

“They celebrate the resilience of the people and the land to withstand disasters, rise from the ashes and adapt continually to change.”

Photographers like Cecelia Gonzalez Vigil and Ramiro Chavez capture the horror of the Peru earthquake and inundated villages in Argentina that forced people out of their homes.

Vigil shot her series, “When the Tremor Ends”, on the central coast of Peru in 2008, a year after the brutal earthquake that shook the country.

In the images, the residents try to reconstruct their lives as they conduct their daily chores with deadpan faces. The message is “nothing daunts us”.

“Two Million Houses in Mexico” by Livia Corona is a visual report of the state of budget housing in Ixtapaluca, one of the fastest growing cities in eastern Mexico, marked by rows of single-storied low-cost concrete houses.

Chavez travels with his camera to Miramar, a tiny Argentinean tourist town that had to be abandoned after a lake, Laguna Mar Chiquta, rose overrunning the town.

The landscape is spooky with urban landmarks rising like ghost edifices from a bottom of a vast wetland that merges with the lake.

Photographer Morfi Jimerez of Peru freezes elegiac frames of old homes tucked deep into the recesses of the rugged Peruvian Andes.

Shot in sepia with a touch of rust, it is a folkloric series of mountain life in dilapidated stone shacks, rich with the textures of everyday living and simplistic beauty.

Nikola Okin Frioli narrates the desperate journey of immigrants from Guatemala who risk their lives to follow their dream to the US.

The photo-essay, “The Other Side of American Dream”, shocks viewers with harsh images of mutilation and mayhem incurred in chasing the trail to America.

Immigrants with severed limbs - maimed by near-fatal fall from buses, ship and automobiles - and survivors of police torture stand out as symbols of human suffering in Frioli’s frames.

“Each person shines with his own light. The photographs reflect the concern of professionals to changes that occur in their surroundings,” said Claudi Carreras, curator of the exhibition.