Tuesday, December 20, 2005

when going home isn't possible...

I had the opportunity to witness Brazilian photographer Sebastiao Salgado's exhibit at the Leonardo gallery in Salt Lake City. He has taken hundreds of images of people in countries all over the world who are refugees. Millions of people who have left their homes or their homes have been destroyed, and are living in plastic shelters, caves, under train tracks, anywhere they can find to survive. Salgado spent over six years documenting the lives of people in Africa, Asia, Central and South America, the Middle East; so many, many children, who are fleeing from war, famine and natural disasters.

I spent about an hour and a half there, walking from image to image, letting the eyes of people sink into mine. Sending many wordless prayers. I knew of Somalia, of the oppresssion of the Kurds. But a prison camp outside a city in Asia with high concrete walls, six feet high barbed wire where people are kept that are "in between?" Beyond the walls of this camp, you can see the sky scrapers of the modern city. Many of the photographs seemed surreal - how could this be happening now? I left the exhibit quite devastated and committed - committed to do what I can to alleviate suffering when I encounter it here, in this city in Utah; and committed to continuing the conversation about ways we can help. It does feel overwhelming, and the suffering is immense. And as religious people, as people dedicated to principles that promote freedom and justice, we need to do whatever we can. Supporting the UU Service Committee is one way. Having conversations with each other, in our families, congregations, communities.
Thank you Sebastiao, for being willing to go to these dangerous, desperate and unlivable places and bring the faces of people home to us. Your images and work are absolutely vital and so needed. We can create revolutions of kindness and care that begin with knowing what is real, how lives really are, where people are having to scrape out a place, a life. When going home isn't possible, we have to build sanctuaries in our hearts.

"We are all interconnected, and we depend on one another more than we know."
Rev. Barbara Hamilton-Holway

2 Comments:

Blogger Robin Edgar said...

Greetings from the True North Strong and Free Telos,

A Sebastio Salgado exhibition, or even multiple ones. . . would be one very appropriate way of observing a World Day of Conscience amongst many other possible ways. So what will you do?

I hereby invite you and all other U*Us to participate in World Day of Conscience on March 29th 2006 and on all future occasions that the total solar eclipse "Eye of God" *symbolically* looks down from the heavens on our little blue planet Earth.

Allah prochaine,

Robin Edgar

6:29 PM  
Blogger Robin Edgar said...

Please accept my apologies for spelling your first name wrong Sebastiao.

You, and every single other photographer in the whole wide world, are hereby openly, publicly and most cordially invited to participate in the very first observance of World Day of Conscience on March 29th, 2006 when the total solar eclipse symbolic "Eye of God" metaphorically "looks down from the heavens" on our troubled planet in any way that you so choose to do so, within reason that is. ;-)

More specifically you, and all oher photographers world-wide, are invited to organize individual or group expositions, and indeed individual or group "web sights" and blogs that present the concept of conscience to the eyes of the world in the best photographs possible.

This is my brand new photography blog with a conscience albeit not a photography blog dealing exclusively with conscience. I will get around to that when I can.

10:29 AM  

Post a Comment

<< Home