Life after Land Mines

Victim of Land Mines

Exhibit: Vidas Minadas
Instituto Cervantes
Calle Alcalá 49 (entrante calle Barquillo, 4)
Metro: Banco de España
Free entrance

With the current anti-land-mine budget, it would take as many as 1,000
years to dismantle the millions of land mines planted across the world. This is
just one of the facts that lodges itself in your mind as you visit the “Vidas
Minadas” exposition at the Instituto Cervantes.

The exhibit, covering the horror of land mines throughout the world, is based
on the book of the same title. This is the latest contibution by the award-winning photojournalist Gervasio Sánchez – also author of “Children of War” and “Sierra Leona, War and Peace”

Compounding the horror of the photos is the accompanying text detailing
the lives of the victims. Together word
and image tell of savage wounds, laborious rehabilitation and finally the
victims return to “normal” life. The stories are varied but what unites them is
the fact that the all victims are civilians; people who simply went down the
wrong path on the wrong day.

In addition to the portraits, you will also find photos of land
mines and the improvised prostheses most victims wear.

With a penetrating witness-like quality the photos take us on a journey through
the lives of what the newspapers casually refer to as “colatteral damage”. This distinction between media “objectivity”
and personal reality is what the exhibit drives home. We must stop looking at these people as
statistics in far away countries and realize that they are the sons, daughters,
fathers and wives of people just like us.

It’s a great work of photojournalism that invites you to expand your
consciousness.

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