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Migrations: Humanity in Transition | The Migration Transitions Project: Photonarratives with Latina Immigrant Women 
Sebastião Salgado Migrations: Humanity in Transition On view at CDS and the Ackland Art Museum at UNC–Chapel Hill from February 1 through March 28 CDS received support for this project from the North Carolina Arts Council, an agency funded by the state of North Carolina and the National Endowment for the Arts, and from the Wallace Foundation. An on-line gallery and full program of events scheduled for both CDS and the Ackland Art Museum is available on the Ackland Art Museum's Web site. 
The Migration Transitions Project: Photonarratives with Latina Immigrant Women By Deborah Bender and Melanie Wasserman The University of North Carolina, School of Public Health On view through March 28, with an opening reception on February 29, 2–4 p.m. The Migration Transitions Project studied Latina immigrant women and the role of social support in making the transition to a new community and in accessing health services, particularly preventive health services such as prenatal care, immunizations, and cervical cancer screening for women. During the data collection stage of the project, we visited Spanish-language churches in four counties of Piedmont North Carolina. There, after services, we interviewed women, age 15 to 44, asking about the places in which they grew up, what health services they had used there, and their reasons for coming to North Carolina. We also asked about their social support—who they relied on for needed information, for help in accessing health services, and for emotional support. We wanted to know, too, what the ethnic origins of these “bridge persons” were. Our eventual intent is to design health programs that include these three important elements of social support with the intent of easing the difficulties of the migration transition. To be sure we had addressed the particular concerns of women, we also invited a sub-sample of Latina immigrant women to participate in the project as community photographers. This exhibit presents some of the women’s photographs as well as the story that each woman offered to explain why she had taken the photograph and what opportunity or challenge the photograph represented to her. In the conceptualization of the project, we were influenced by the work of documentary photographer Dorothea Lange, whose rendering of the lives of displaced women and their families during the Great Depression told a story more powerful than statistics alone could do. Influenced by the photonarrative works of Wendy Ewald with Durham schoolchildren and Carolyn Wang with rural Chinese women, Deborah Bender has been collaborating with Latina immigrant women as community photographers since 1996. The photographs taken by these women have guided the development of workshops on Spanish and cultural competency for health professionals across North Carolina and provided models for learner-generated ESL lessons. These photographs display sharp insights and a remarkable optimism. There is a quality of resilience in the face of potential adversity that speaks to the women’s hopes and dreams for themselves and for their children. Most of the photographers are of rural origin and have only limited formal education. It is obvious that they place a great value on personal relationships with family and friends, new and old, Latino and North American. Though these women reached the United States through a diversity of paths, some more difficult than others, they share common experiences: belief in the strength of the family as a key source of support, hope for better health care and education for their children, and a certain loneliness at being separated from those they left at home.
Gallery Hours: Monday–Thursday: 9 a.m.–7 p.m. Friday: 9 a.m.–5 p.m. Saturday: 11 a.m.–4 p.m. Sunday: 1–5 p.m.
banner image: Partial view of the Lyndhurst Gallery, one of four exhibition spaces at CDS. Photograph by Christopher Sims. top |
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