Young boys play soccer in the shadow of the Guzapa volcano in the countryside of El Salvador (1991).
Every once in a while it is important to take stock of the histories we share. The photograph marks time in our collective memories as we remember a place or moment.
Looking over the dozen or so binders filled with negatives and slides from another time in my life reminds me of how fleeting our existence here really is. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, I documented peoples and communities from Central America displaced by civil conflict. Now, this history seems so distant and remote.
Motivated by a commitment to capture what I believed were the day-to-day struggles for dignity and integrity of the poor, it has been hard to put the past behind.
Our focus today turns elsewhere. That's the way we are -- turning from one crisis to another. Today's Darfur or Bagdad is yesterday's Managua or El Salvador. Sometimes I wonder at how images influence the human capacity for compassion, caring and action. Perhaps because we are so inundated with emotionally charged reminders of injustice and deprivation in the world, that we allow ourselves to become anesthetized to the pain and suffering images can represent.