An excellent
photographic exhibition from photojournalist Carlos Reyes Manzo focusing on
“dwellings” has been unveiled at the Peltz gallery in London.
Carlos has brought
together many images from across the world displaying the lives of struggle of
so many people.
Some of the images
show no more than shacks, others formerly substantial dwellings then
destroyed. One of the latter images concerned a house destroyed by the Israeli
Defence Force.
The exhibition is
also a chronicle of Carlos’s journalistic journey, taking in the Nicaraguan
revolution of 1979 to Ethiopia in the 1980s and Iraq and Afghanistan in the
early part of this century. There are also contrasting images of England,
including scenes from Brighton and London streets.
The exhibition shows
struggle and hope – concern that things don’t seem to be getting any better
across the world as the decades go by, yet the resilience of people to survive
and wherever and however prosper.
Carlos told of his
own journey, as someone who was expelled from Chile to Panama, after being held in the Tres Alamos concentration camp in Santiago by the
murderous Pinochet regime. Carlos eventually arrived in Britain, where he lived in some of the worst sort of
dwellings in Britain at the time, as he started his journalistic journey. “I
realised what was happening in Britain then was happening all around the
world,” said Carlos, who recalled graphic images of war in Afghanistan with
people losing their legs and the struggle of Roma families against
discrimination.
One image shows a
dalit woman in India standing with dignity, despite having stood and been
ignored for four hours.
Chilean ambassador
Rolando Drago paid tribute to how Carlos’s work illustrated the suffering of
humanity across the world, the lack of opportunity and need for human rights.
The exhibition has
been organised by the politics department at Birbeck College as part of its ongoing
work on housing issues. The other collaborators in the work are the Birbeck
Centre for Iberian and Latin American Visual Studies.
*The exhibition runs
until 20 March at Peltz Gallery, Birbeck School of Arts, 43 Gordon Square
London, WC1H OPD
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