Archived images from Central America and Mexico between 1985-1996.
A sketch of Thomas Merton I made in 1990.
Enter the heart.
Eyes open.
The camera is my witness to the immense possibility of conscience.
Here is my journal. In the San Jose Orphanage in Santa Rosa de Copan, Honduras (1988). I move through time, printing images, sticking them to the pages along with my thoughts. I have two dozens journals. They call out to me. Remember this, they say. Yes, I remember.
Remembering the urgency of a time, the places, peoples, and events years removed from reality.
Blessed by experience, I carry the burden of these years in the depths of my being. It is not easy ealking away from memory. The camera is my witness. Strangers fixed in the half-light of history.
Santa Rosa de Copan, Honduras, Raulito (1989). The image is never enough. I write in my journals -- endlessly trying to capture something beyond the experience captured by my cameras. I worked in black and white. Two lenses -- a wide angle 20mm and a 180mm. No auto anything. I had two camera bodies most the time -- one as backup. I carried my film in a book bag -- TRI-X black & white film 400 asa -- 36 exposures a roll. 20 rolls for two weeks. Every frame had to count. I could not shoot in color at first -- I grew up with black & white and that's the way I taught myself to see. Color blinds the experience, it dazzles the senses.
Santa Rosa de Copan, Honduras (1989). Raulito sits up in a wheel chair after surgery to release some of the scarred tissue from his burns. God weeps for us.
The light was just coming up over the hills, when I heard the footsteps of a guerrilla patrol heading out for the day. It had been a busy night with a firefight between the army and the FLMN a short distance away. The sound of machine guns -- the tapping of rain on a roof -- echoed through the woods. Boys as young as 10 had become accustomed to warfare. Born in refugee camps in Honduras, the young soon found their way to their homeland - El Salvador. 1990.
God is a psalm on the lips of angels. There is movement in the dark. She is there, sitting quietly, trying to make out the odd sounds -- a swoosh of air -- warm and sticky.She recieves all that is around here without pause. God is everywhere. She cannot name the experience. She is blind. She cannot imagine a silent God. The hushed voice at midnight. A first breath.
God is a thunderhead.
Tortured. Wrists raw. Rolling off the back of truck on the way to prison, he escaped. He came to seek help. He wanted to tell his story.
"No one man is ever called to suffer merely for the sake of suffering. What, afterall, is more personal than suffering? The awful futility of our attempts to convey the reality of our suffering to other people, and the tragic inadequacy of human sympathy, both prove how incommunicable a thing suffering really is." Thomas Merton
Quetzaltenango, Guatemala
"The children of the world are innocent, vulnerable and dependent. They are also curious, active and full of hope. Their time should be one of joy and peace, of playing, learning and growing. their future should be shaped in harmony and cooperation." United Nations Childrens Fund
San Pedro Sula, Honduras, shoe shine (1988)
Mesa Grande Refugee Camp, Honduras (1989)
Santa Marta Cabanas, El Salvador, 1990
San Salvador, El Salvador, street clowns, 1990.
Street sweeper, Santa Rosa de Copan, Honduras, 1987.
El Salavador, child with broken doll, 1990.
Valle Verde, El Salvador, 1991.
Usulatan, El Salvador, FMLN combatant, 1991.
Cuzcatlan, El Salvador. 1991.
Suchitoto, El Salvador, children at play on the even of the signing of the peace accords between the government and the rebels. 1991.
Cabanas, El Salvador. 1991.
Cuzcatlan, El Salvador. 1991.
Cuzcatlan, El Salvador. 1991.
Cuzcatlan, El Salvador. 1991.
Santa Rosa de Copan, Honduras, sick child on bench.1988.
Santa Rosa de Copan, Honduras, 1987. Santa Rosa de Copan, Honduras, 1989.
Santa Rosa de Copan, Honduras, 1987.
Santa Rosa de Copan, Honduras, 1988.
Santa Rosa de Copan, Honduras, mother and sick child. 1989.
Santa Rosa de Copan, Honduras, 1988.
Santa Rosa de Copan, Honduras, 1989.
Santa Rosa de Copan, Honduras, 1988.
Santa Rosa de Copan, Honduras, 1988.
Santa Rosa de Copan, Honduras, 1988.
Santa Rosa de Copan, Honduras, mothers holding infants after receiving cleft lip and palet surgery, 1988.
Santa Rosa de Copan, Honduras, 1988.
Santa Rosa de Copan, Honduras, 1988.
Santa Rosa de Copan, Honduras, 1989.
Santa Rosa de Copan, Honduras, 1987.
Santa Rosa de Copan, Honduras, 1987.
Santa Rosa de Copan, Honduras, 1987.
Santa Rosa de Copan, Honduras, 1987.
Santa Rosa de Copan, Honduras, 1987.
Santa Rosa de Copan, Honduras, 1987.
Santa Rosa de Copan, Honduras, 1987.
Santa Rosa de Copan, Honduras, 1987.
San Pedro Sula, Honduras, 1989.
Santa Rosa de Copan, Honduras, 1987.
Santa Rosa de Copan, Honduras, 1987.
Santa Rosa de Copan, Honduras, 1989.
Santa Rosa de Copan, Honduras, 1989.
Santa Rosa de Copan, Honduras, 1989.
Santa Rosa de Copan, Honduras, 1989.
Santa Rosa de Copan, Honduras, looking for lice. 1989.
Santa Rosa de Copan, Honduras, 1987.
La Entrada, Honduras, 1988.
Santa Rosa de Copan, Honduras, 1989.
Santa Rosa de Copan, Honduras, 1989.
Santa Rosa de Copan, Honduras, 1989.
Santa Rosa de Copan, Honduras, 1987.
Santa Rosa de Copan, Honduras, 1987.
Santa Rosa de Copan, Honduras, 1987.
Santa Rosa de Copan, Honduras, 1987.
San Marco, Honduras, 1989.
Segundo Montes, El Salvador, 1990.
San Salvador, El Salvador, 1990.
Suchitoto, El Salvador. 1991.
San Salvador, El Salvador, 1990.
Mesa Grande Refugee Camp, Honduras, directors of the fourth return to El Salvador. 1989.
