One of my favorite things about my work here is when I bring 4×6 prints to the subjects that I’ve been working with. Since January, I’ve been documenting a community of migrants from Zacatecas, who work on the outskirts of Guadalajara making and baking bricks for construction. It is a community of about 140 families, where many kids work, and everyone lives in extreme poverty.
Yesterday, I spent most of the afternoon with the students who attend a special school provided by an NGO, and as evening arrived, I stopped by the home of a large extended family to drop off about 60 prints from my last few visits, some from a baptism that I attended a few weeks ago. Rosa started calling out for other neighbors who were in some of the prints to see, and about a half dozen other people literally came running towards our small group.
Juana, a 17-year-old whom I met the first day I visited the community with two social workers, and who at the time was nearly 9-months pregnant, ran over too, asking me if I had her prints. She was shy that first day, scared out of her mind, having never seen a doctor, and on the doorstep of her first birth. Now, she has a healthy child, and was exhilerated to see the pictures, the first she’d had of her baby. I left, as they sorted out who would own which pictures, and then as I was walking away, I heard that once shy girl yell, “Josue! Josue!”
She wondered if I could make a portrait of her, her husband and the baby all together, since he wasn’t in the initial photos. I happily obliged, made a quick photo and promised to return on Wednesday with the print for them. “And if you can’t find me,” Juana said, “You can leave the picture with my grandmother, OK?”
It takes time to build trust in the communities in which I’m working. My spanish isn’t all that good, and I’m the tall gringo with the cameras, and no one seems to understand exactly what I keep returning for. But, I’ve found that when I give back to the community something like pictures, which none of them have, it seems to open many doors to friendship, warmth and trust. It is these moments so far on this adventure that I enjoy most.
Josh tis is a very touching story, very nice, I have so much respect for all that you do for the people in my home town.