LiFe Force: What Love can Save

Description and Artist Statement:

Oblivion can become a silent weapon of contempt and discrimination. All human beings needs a bonds of love and support to develop in a healthy way. However, society has often shown that stigma, prejudice and disregard are the most common ways to make a person with a disability became invisible.

Jorge was born in a small rural town in Argentina 38 years ago with a congenital malformation caused by a medicine with thalidomide prescribed to his mother without any pharmacovigilance sanitary protocol, one year before he was born. He also has pterygium in both eyes invading his cornea and could mean a complete loss of sight; a pathological condition that worsened severely due to the lack of specialized treatments.

With only a few weeks of life both the doctor who brought him to the world and his own family environment, they told his mother that it was better if he let the child die because he would still be unable to survive in this world by himself given his condition.

But Jorge has an incredible life force and his desire to live was so powerful that he persevered despite the circumstances.

He is married to Vero. She has mielomeningocele, which affects her ability to walk and had to endure several surgeries to keep her spine erect. They fell in love 8 years ago and decided to start a family.

Besides Jorge is also studying at a Community School to finish his studies. He has the desire to be able to enter Law School. However the greatest miracle for him and Vero was the birth of their daughter Ángeles.

The bonds of love, unconditional support, accepting each other, and tolerance are the pillars that allow them to stay strong and keep going.

Sadly and unfairly they seem invisible to social services. They receive very little economic support from the Argentine state.

I started this project at the end of 2015. Initially I approached Jorge and his family from the place of classic photojournalism angle with the intention of photographing the tragedy and the victims of disability in Argentina. Then I understood that this was an important but non conditioning aspect and that despite having so much against, this family was trying to build a decent and possible life. I let some time go by and I went back to photographing, but this time I did it after living with them for more than a year and a half.

This story seeks to highlight the reparative force of desire and the bonds of love in the face of social injustices that threaten life itself. The strongest and most emotional images of this story are visible because they show the world that they were able to create to live in and not just survive.

This project also seeks to break with the preconceived ideas and disapproving looks of many sectors of society called "normal", perhaps seeking to illuminate from the simplicity and authenticity of human relations, that which belongs to the order of the elemental so that our society is constituted in equality of rights.