A long line of men and women wait outside a single-story building in Sonora, Mexico waiting to vote.
A handicapped Ugandan man turns the pages of a thick magazine with his mouth.
Heavily armed soldiers gaze stoically in different directions in front of a store in Guatemala City.
Rwandan orphans dressed in green uniforms play happily in front of their school.
These are just some of the many expertly captured moments included in the Art Club's newest undertaking, Injustice and Hope: A Student Photographic Exhibition, which opened Tuesday in the Bapst Art Gallery. Sponsored by the fine arts department, the Salmanowitz program, the advanced study grants program, and the faith, peace, and justice program, the exhibition features 42 photographs from 11 artists, all former or current students of Boston College.
With little or no descriptions, the pictures speak for themselves, displaying the manifestations of social injustices throughout the world. Many are the result of the student's own travel abroad, like Jennifer Taylor's, CSON '08, series of Ganta, Liberia.
Taken while she was studying culturally effective health education for a month in Liberia, Africa, the photographs show some of the effects of the civil wars that ravaged the country for 14 years. One features a tall tree littered with gaping bullet holes; another, a shattered wall with bullet holes that have the appearance of dried bloodstains. Most of her pictures lend themselves to the exhibition's second theme, that of hope for the future, by showing the members of local Christian churches who collaborated in a march against ritualistic killing and rape, two offenses that characterized the cruel wars in Liberia. A sign bearing the crest of the United Nations Development Program contains a rifle snapped in two and the slogan, "Rebuild Liberia: Act Against Gun Violence." A collection of women congregates solemnly; one wears a headdress that reads, "THE MOTHERS SAY NO TO RAPE/KILLING." A procession of men, women, and children sing and march, while a man holds a sign with the words: "Ears for the Masses Speak Against Injustices."
Karen Kauffman's, A&S '08, contributions to the exhibit also carry a message of hope. The photos come from her summer spent in Germany, where she studied the contemporary German public memory of the Holocaust.
One of her works shows several steippelsteinnen, or "stumbling stones," markers embedded in the ground, which indicate places where deported Jews used to live. Another displays a part of the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a project completed in 2004, which contains 2,711 concrete slabs or "stelae" arranged in a grid pattern on a sloping field in the heart of Berlin. Another of her photos is of the Sachsen Hausen concentration camp, in front of which is a gate with the words arbeit macht frei, a slogan that has become a symbol for the camps and translates to "work liberates."
Some of the photographs contain less obvious protests to social injustice, such as Sarah Kearney's, A&S '08, images of poor urban areas of India.
In one, men trudge through rubble and trash in a New Delhi street with a Pepsi advertisement behind them and a billboard displaying the smiling faces of a well-dressed Indian family standing loftily over their heads. Another captures the penetrating gaze of a beautiful young Indian girl with bright, questioning eyes.
These images are just some of the many impressive examples from Injustice and Hope, an exhibition that silently and strongly displays the effects of crimes against humanity throughout the world and leaves the viewer to make his or her own conclusions.
The only complaint one can register is that the exhibit is perhaps too small and leaves one with the desire to see more. See the outstanding display while you can before it closes tomorrow.
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