Strong Women

This photograph stood out as very strong to me. There are three women and a young girl in the photo and they all had very stern looks on their faces, looks of sadness and anger. The message I got from just looking into their eyes was that these women are strong and they are standing for something, but there is a certain hurt held within their eyes. This reminded me of the women in my family. All very strong, independent and protective of the entire family. The women are also all standing next to each other touching each other with their arms in some way and one of the women has her arm around the little girl standing in front. There isn't much of a background to the picture itself, the people take up almost all of it.

The chalkboard in this picture says: "To know the truth about what happened to our relatives so the torturers do not stay unpunished." To me, I think that they are living in maybe an unsafe area and something horrible happened to their loved ones, their husbands. Maybe the men were trying to keep the family safe and they turned up dead. To have such a vengeful feeling shows me that they know this wasn't an accident and that something horrible is happening to many other people as well. They use the word torture, So maybe there is some kind of gang fighting against something. It shows that there are at least two sides to this problem and that these "torturers" remain anonymous to the community. But for all we know, these "torturers" maybe be seen as something like freedom fighters, like in one of the other photos we looked at. Maybe they are trying to do something for the greater good. i guess it all depends on what side of the fight you are on.

Photo Tag:
Martin Webber
To know the truth about what happened to our relatives so the torturers do not stay unpunished.
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2005