Poverty.

It breeches your eyes, your thoughts, and your heart, with a harsh reminder of the tragedy that exists in many regions of the world obscured by political turmoil. Meanwhile, traces of sympathy and meaningful advocacy are suppressed by the convenient distance from our own mundane life in surburbia.  Yet, in this community and the many similar to it, what strikes you is not the utter disarray in which they manage to find comfort and live life, but the honest and abrupt tenacity of hope that radiates from the black and white photographs captured by Graham Hunt and his lens.

The story Graham tells via his narrative photography is not of an untold paradigm or new consequence to apathetic incumbents, but of families and El Salvadorian people who are surviving amidst the ruin of stable diplomatic government and achieving a voice of activism long forgotten by developing nations: responsible unification and declaration of rights. Rights to property, rights to water, rights to the necessities that make living attainable. An eloquent marriage of artistic virtue and vision that uniquely, yet respectfully quantify the rise and fall of electoral merit in a country that desperately warrants the gentle hand of its government, not the oppression of corrupted political hierarchy.

In appreciation of his emotional journey and distinctive perspective Truth&Rights proudly presents Graham Hunt and his journal of storied and affected film.

T&R: Can tell us a little but about your formative years?

Graham Hunt: I was born and raised in the small town of Del Norte, in southern Colorado’s San Luis Valley.  I attended college at Regis University, where I majored in Spanish and minored in Peace and Justice studies.

T&R: How did you wind up in El Salvador?

Graham Hunt: My freshman year at Regis, I had the opportunity to participate in the university’s annual delegation to the School of the Americas protest and Ignatian Family Teach-In at Fort Benning, Georgia.  It was through my participation in the delegation, for all intents and purposes, that I got my introduction to the history of U.S. intervention in Latin America.  It was also through the SOA delegation that I came into contact with Regis University’s Romero House, an intentional student community taking its name from Óscar Arnulfo Romero, the martyred archbishop of San Salvador (assassinated in 1980 on the orders of an SOA graduate).  My sophomore year I joined the Romero House and consequently traveled with my fellow community members on a pilgrimage to El Salvador.  There is a great deal that I could say about that initial contact with the Salvadoran people, but suffice it to say that, following that preliminary experience, I knew I had to go back.  My Junior year, I was accepted into Santa Clara University’s Casa de la Solidaridad program and studied for a semester at the University of Central America.  My time with the Casa solidified my falling-in-to-love with El Salvador and during my senior year–while writing a thesis dealing with the idea of the university in society of Jesuit Ignacio Ellacuría, assassinated in 1989 at the University of Central America–I was actively looking for a way back to El Salvador.

T&R: And even more, what got you involved with the citizen’s plight?

Graham Hunt: In January 2008, while accompanying a second Romero House delegation to El Salvador, I came to know the community of La Cuchilla and its struggle.  I don’t know that I can adequately encapsulate what it was that so struck me, but I was deeply affected by the community leaders’ testimonies of the persecution they have suffered as a consequence of fighting for their rights and, more importantly, the strength and the faith with which they carry on in the face of the most adverse of circumstances.  In 2009, in the run-up to El Salvador’s presidential election, I was assigned by the luck of the draw to coordinate the Centro de Intercambio y Solidaridad’s electoral observation in Antiguo Cuscatlán.  A few weeks before the election, I visited La Cuchilla to see if it might be possible to bring a team of observers there to converse with community members and get their perspective on the political situation.  The Junta Directiva accepted and, from then on, I began to spend a great deal of time there, listening and doing my best to document.  My relationship with the Las Victorias and 15 de Marzo communities came later (I won’t tell here the long story of how).  The photo essay is the product of three months spent meeting with people in the communities.

I should mention that it was largely the work of photographer Abraham Menashe that really taught me the power of the image.  With regards to photography, Menashe once said “Photographs made with heart awaken us; they remind us of our true nature and of the work that needs to be done. Collectively, the photographs form a plea for understanding, for tolerance, for compassion.”  It is largely this kind of an inspiration that impels my work, such as it is.  Finally, in terms of method, I have been affected (once again) by Abraham Menashe’s philosophy of using only wide-angle lenses, as they require the photographer to get close to the subject.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 1st, 2009 and is filed under Galleries, VOL2009.02. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.