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What do you get when you put disposable cameras into the hands of 15 immigrants from 5 different Latin American countries and ask them to chronicle their lives on the Mississippi Gulf Coast? You get over 40 photos in the exhibit Opening Doors/Abriendo Puertas: A Photographic Look at What We All Have in Common.
 
This exhibit comes to the Katrina Research Center on August 27.

When the project was launched last summer, organizers saw it as an effort to celebrate the Hispanic/Latino community thriving along the coast. It grew into a communication tool between immigrants and the community they live in, said Anne Kotleba, Community Arts Coordinator with the Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art. “It’s a rare chance to see how immigrants see themselves and their world here in Mississippi.”

“We tried to get a mixture of people from different cultures, countries and experiences,” said Kotleba, who coordinated the project along with Bridget Hayden, an anthropology professor at The University of Southern Mississippi, and community volunteer Cirilo Villa. The photographers are a cross-section of adults and children, men and women, carpenters and landscapers, parents and students. They are immigrants from Guatemala, Honduras, Peru, El Salvador and Mexico.  While most participants still live here in the community, others have already moved on to other jobs in other states or have returned to their home countries.
 
Photography is the perfect medium for what Hayden said she hopes will be a first installment of an ongoing program. “Language presents many stumbling blocks for new immigrants,” said Hayden. “And so many voices speak for them. It’s a rare opportunity to hear from the people themselves.”

The images depict views of workplaces: men constructing roofs, a hotel housekeeper’s cleaning cart, men working the menial jobs of laying irrigation pipe and framing houses. Some of the photos look like they are borrowed from a family photo album with smiling loved ones, friends hanging out, a boy heading to school. Other photos touch common chords of the familiar like the Biloxi Lighthouse or palm trees on sandy beaches.

To get candid photos, the coordinators agreed that they should keep the instructions very simple, leaving creative control in the hands of the participants. Kotleba said the group met weekly at El Pueblo/The Village of Biloxi, where the only instruction was in the conversations about community interactions and their lives in the United States. The cameras were handed out, photos taken and returned a few weeks later. Developed photos were shared at following meetings with the photographers choosing the final images.

“The photographers talked about what they were thinking about when they took the photos or what the image meant to them,” Kotleba said. “They spoke of the photos as if reminding them of life and not necessarily art.”
Captions written by the photographers accompany each image. They vary from brief descriptions of the scene to more introspective feelings, such as the caption 33-year-old Soraya Luna writes for her photo of a cleaning cart she uses as a housekeeper to clean hotel rooms: “To think that these chemicals with time can affect my health. But it is all for the work and so that my children won’t lack the indispensable.”

The project is sponsored by El Pueblo and the Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art. The exhibit will be on display at the Katrina Research Center in the Gulf Coast Library at the Gulf Park Campus in Long Beach August 27 through October 5.