Village life photography exhibit opens at Image Factory
A new exhibit opens tonight at the Image Factory in Belize City and as News Five’s Alyssa Noble reports, the show focuses on life in one of the prettiest places in the whole country.
Alyssa Noble, Reporting
In 2003, Peace Corps volunteer Crissie Ferrara moved to Laguna village, in the Toledo district. Little did the professional photographer realize that her life was about to change forever.
Crissie Ferrara, Photographer
?Life in Laguna is really amazing, beautiful and tranquil. I just find it very inspirational photographically. And I find many people in the village to be very friendly and warm and they help me very much throughout my time there because I was alone, as the only individual from the Peace Corps volunteer. Well my prime mission in Laguna was to be a volunteer, not a photographer. So for a long time, I didn?t photograph at all and I just, my main objective was to make friends and do the work I was supposed to do. So I focused on that first, and once I created those friendships and the trust was there, then I was able to photograph my friends. And most of the people in my photographs are my friends.?
One of those friends would eventually become Ferrara?s husband. Today she hopes her work will provide a unique perspective of old world customs in a modern society.
Crissie Ferrara
?I think people who live maybe further up north, that don?t realize the way of life down in Toledo, they should come and check it out, there?s a lot to learn, there?s a lot of photographs. There are a lot of photographs, that show a process of how something is made, whether it be a thatching or whether it be making tortilla or something like that, or digging for shrimp or washing in the creek. Any of those things, if their not really used to in their life up here, they?ll experience something and maybe learn something. I am more of a realist photographer, the stuff I photograph is the actual thing, there is not cropping, there?s no manipulation or digital manipulation. I?m recording real life, and real life is what inspires me. A lot of photographers create things in studios or create things on locations, sets and I just record things that were actually there.?
Alyssa Noble reporting for News 5.
Proceeds of the photographs will be donated to Laguna Village. The exhibit will be open to the public for the next month at the Image Factory on North Front Street.
