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Subscribe to RSSPhotographers and journalists are often criticized for flying in to a distant, foreign environment and telling a story in a way that makes people appear exotic, rather than empathizing with them. 'My name is Filda Adoch', a documentary project by the Italian photographer Martina Bacigalupo, is an example of a powerful, compassionate alternative.
President Barack Obama recently ordered up to 100 U.S. military trainers into central Africa to help combat the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a band of rebels behind a campaign of murder, rape and kidnapping that has plagued northern Uganda for 20 years. Ugandan government troops have also been accused of committing human rights abuses during the conflict.
Filda Adoch is one of those most affected by the violence from both sides. The 53 year old Ugandan has suffered the loss of a son, two husbands, and her own leg which was amputated after she stepped on a landmine. Through it all, she has displayed extraordinary spirit and endurance, continuing to take care of her five children, two godsons, ten grandchildren, her mother and a brother.
Martina Bacigalupo / Agence VU via Aurora Photos
"Here I am carrying the firewood home but it looks as if the firewood on my head is something like wings that make me fly in the sky."
Filda Adoch pictured in Along Village, Gulu District, Uganda, in May 2010.
Martina Bacigalupo spoke with msnbc.com at the Visa pour l'image photojournalism festival in Perpignan, France, where her work was exhibited in September. "The project is an encounter between me and Filda," she explained, "and between our two worlds. I spent three weeks with Filda, staying in her village. The simple idea I had was to collaborate with her."
"When you first arrive in a place everything is new and amazing. People are extraordinary. You tend to project yourself on to things -- your ideas, your culture -- and exaggerate things. It becomes about you, it's not about the people who are your subjects."
"I tried to get beyond that. I wanted to say 'I exist, with my background, my culture, my ideas, my experience of this place. Let me put this together in my photography. Let me put it in front of you - Filda - give it to you, and then you give something back to me.’"
"Each time I took pictures, the following day I would take them to Filda. She was involved in the editing -- sometimes she would look at a picture and say 'no, this is not me'. The images are my choice, but I listened to her. There's a picture with the cow and the chicken, for example. She really wanted this picture to be included.
Martina Bacigalupo / Agence VU via Aurora Photos
"This is a very true picture because everybody is in it, even the chicken. It's very clear."
Filda Adoch with some of her family in Along Village, Gulu District, Uganda, in January 2011.
As we watched people crowd around the exhibit in France, peering intently at Adoch's words beneath the pictures, I asked Bacigalupo how she thought Adoch would react to the scene. "She will laugh when she sees pictures of this! She'll see a bunch of white people looking at her life."
"But I remember our first meeting. 'Go and tell my story,' she said to me. If people looking at the pictures feel a connection with Filda, that is success to me."
And how did the photographer herself feel to see the work exhibited?
"It was only when I looked at the pictures on the wall myself that I realized there are not many pictures where you notice that Filda's leg is missing. She doesn't cry about her lost leg, she doesn't show it. I was conscious that she was so proud of her body, her strength. She feels strong, she feels beautiful, and it is her beauty that comes across."
See more images in the slideshow: One woman's story of surviving 20 years of conflict in Uganda.
Photographer Martina Bacigalupo is based in Burundi, in the Great Lakes region of Africa. She produced the project with a grant she received as the winner of the Canon Female Photojournalist Award.
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I am so humbled by these images...by this woman's story.
A beautiful strong woman!
Fabulous! We love you Filda. We do the same if we are mothers. Maybe in different ways but we do the same.
These images, and Filda's words, were surprisingly moving to me. I do feel a connection to her; she is a success. I will remember her for a long time. My many congratulations and gratitude to Martina Bacigalupo, whose method is also a success. I would like to see more of her work.
Makes me feel so little in comparison to her and her struggles. She is a brave and strong woman. These pictures speak louder than words.
Praying for you Filda. Such amazing strength, beauty and courage. You are loved and not forgotten by your Father in heaven. Psalm 82:3 "Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute".
Does anyone know how we can help this lady and her family? Email me at horiginal@hotmail.com.
Gettin' real tired of you POS not blurring the breasts of this woman. Show me one journalistic story about a white woman who is in a topless protest or elsewhere where her breasts AREN'T blurred.
i want to help you Filda and ease your burdens...Martina, please post how we can help this woman and her people.
Birth control --too many kids puts a lot of pressure on these people and those of us who are asked to feed them
I agree with you Olivepit3. Teach these people about birth control. That's why my husband and I only had 2 children. We had what we could comfortably afford.
Oviepit3 - sorry but i guess you missed the point completely but let's read it a quick summary together:
"It was only when I looked at the pictures on the wall myself that I realized there are not many pictures where you notice that Filda's leg is missing. She doesn't cry about her lost leg, she doesn't show it. I was conscious that she was so proud of her body, her strength. She feels strong, she feels beautiful, and it is her beauty that comes across."
Good for this strong, powerful woman. Hopefully through the efforts of President Obama sending those troops, and the troops themselves, they will be able to bring an end the the rebels. It is terrible the things that people will do to their fellow human beings.
You Ugandans that made it out, got educated and have resources now, Go back and help your brothers and sisters. It will not help them to bring them here, too much culture shock! No jobs here now and a welfare system totally out of control. Go back and help!!
Ah, Boogablue, you see the forest but not the trees. Those breasts are her badge of honor, like her stomach that shows she's borne children, like the muscles on her back that prove how hard she works. I'd wager she isn't ashamed of them.
It's only in our own society that we wrap them up and hide them away as a source of shame. Just like stretch marks and softness. Don't project our own weakness of mores on Filda; though she comes from a place of hardship and oppression, she's miles ahead of most of us in a lot of ways.
"Badge of Honor?"
This isn't about how this Ugandan woman feels about herself, her body. This is about how European-Americans portray people who are not European-American in the press. Janet Jackson's breasts revealed prompt efforts throughout an industry and throughout a regulatory body, and SHE IS VILIFIED TO THIS DAY THROUGHOUT THE AMERICAN CULTURE (for actions she did not directly take!).
There is no disclaimer, or attempt to limit the eyes of children to gaze upon this naked woman, but take photos of some naked European-American with a story and try to get it - even here, without it being censored!!! You prove YOU hold no value of this woman's modesty.
What a truly beautiful woman! Words fail to describe my amazement at this woman's strength and spirit. Thank you, Martina, for showing the World your photos of Filda. Her incredible strength, spirit and love for family comes through in your pictures. May we all remember that she is but one amazing woman whose life has been devastated by war. There are many others out there whose story will never be told.
This story is not about birth control, or education it's about the injustice and oppression these people endured in a country gone amok. SHAME ON YOU THE UGANDAN GOVERNMENT AND THE LRA ARMY!
I am humbled by her story and as I look at my house and possesions I am embarassed by them. I struggled with cancer treatments for 12 years but that doen's even come cloe to what she has been through. But we both survive and continue to live life as it comes to us. What a remarkable woman and kudos to the journalists who put themselves in harms way to bring stories like this to the for-front.