NICARAGUA: A Society in Transition
My first extensive work in Nicaragua began in 1980-81, after the Sandinista Revolution. I undertook fieldwork there for my MFA in Photography, ultimately focusing my attention on three rural communities that represented compelling aspects of socio-economic change emerging after the war: a small farm cooperative near Estelí, a nationalized coffee farm outside of Matagalpa, and a remote community along the Rio Grande de Matagalpa involved in the Literacy Crusade in Languages.
I returned to Nicaragua in 2001 to retrace my steps and seek out individuals and families in these three communities to examine their lives twenty years later. Additional trips in subsequent years have built on the lives of one extended family, the Valenzuelas, based in Estelí, whom I first met on the Coyolito farm cooperative in 1981. Here is a selection of work from these trips.