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Photo show explores migration
06/09/2008 14:25 - (SA)
Mexico City - From the fear-struck eyes of a Senegalese man waiting to scale a wire fence into Europe to the blank stare of a Russian housewife in Panama, a provocative exhibition setting off from Mexico explores the many faces of one of the world's pressing issues - immigration.
The collection of photos and videos entitled Laberinto de Miradas (Labyrinth of Glances) will be shown in more than 20 countries over the next three years.
The ambitious project was the brainchild of Spanish photographer Claudi Carreras, who spent two years criss-crossing Latin America and Europe to go beyond the stereotyped news photos and capture the drama and deeper questions of identity facing those who leave home.
"We're all travelling in some way. It's about understanding the idea of the immigrant not only as the person in the newspaper who is trying to cross a border in a lorry," said Diego San Vicente, curator at Mexico City's Spanish Cultural Centre where the show opened.
The show features one of the world's busiest border crossings - the road between Tijuana, Mexico and San Diego, California, whose snaking lines of traffic play out continuously on one video.
Depicting daily life
Another, accompanied by photos, depicts daily life in a giant squat in Sao Paulo, Brazil, which some 1 680 immigrants have made their home.
The works by Latin American, Portuguese and Spanish photographers explore not only the physical frontiers but also the sociological, cultural and ideological barriers facing today's immigrants - an issue the International Organisation of Migration calls "one of the defining global issues of the early twenty-first century".
According to the IOM website, there are now about 192 million people living outside their place of birth, or one in every 35 people in the world.
In one telling photo, a Japanese family carries on native customs in their home in Argentina, while a world away shy, indigenous Mexican children mix traditional and street fashion to try to fit into the sprawling capital.
"What interests me is to document this visual discourse," said Mexican photographer Federico Gama who captured some of these youngsters with a telephoto lens.
"It's like when someone puts on a mask and immediately changes their character, like an actor," he said.
The exhibition, organised by the Spanish Agency of International Co-operation for Development and the Catalunya America House, has been arranged in three parts - the first to travel through Central America, with detours to Miami and Cuba.
The second and third parts will set off respectively southward from the Peruvian capital Lima and northward from Sao Paulo later this year, finishing up in the Spanish city of Barcelona in 2010.
- AFP
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South Africa
