Echando Ganas
- Aaron Levy
- School of Arts & Sciences
- Provosts Interdisciplinary Grant
The reality captured in Salzmann’s portraits emerges from an intimate vantage point within the community. The person who suffers discrimination and stigmatization in society is not presented here as a passive victim, but as a dignified subject who has individual and collective rights and aspirations, regardless of whether they are denied those in society. (Stephanie's Quinceañera, Philadelphia, July 13, 2019. Photo by Laurence Salzmann)
Aaron Levy will present an exhibition of Laurence Salzmann’s photography and documentary film works at Slought. Over the past seventeen years, Philadelphia-based photographer and filmmaker Laurence Salzmann has grown close to a community of people originally from the Mexican state of Puebla, now living in Philadelphia. Most of the Mexican immigrants Salzmann came to know planned to stay in Philadelphia a comparatively short time. But many did not return. They stayed in Philadelphia, married, started families, and altered their plans to go back to their home regions. Slought will exhibit the photography and documentary film works from Salzmann that focus on the lives of these Mexicans and Mexican-Americans in Philadelphia, looking into the lives of individuals, families and communities in their adopted city. The project will also involve an intensive mentorship program for a group of 6-8 young people, children of the undocumented workers, whose purpose is to increase participation in and identification with the city, and its opportunities.
“Ahora seremos gente tanto de aquí como de allá, las dos cosas al mismo tiempo [Now we will be people from here and there, both at the same time].”
—Mexican migrant and immigration activist Guadalupe Gómez, quoted by Alicia Schmidt Camacho, in Migrant Imaginaries: Latino Cultural Politics in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands(2008)
Echando Ganas translates as “Doing Your Best”, and as a title is intended to convey how those who now reside in Philadelphia have found a way to create a new life in the United States.