A young girl walks alongside a field in bloom, plucking the bright yellow flowers as she passes, to take with her on her journey ahead - she’s part of what’s known as the Migrant Caravan.
Internationally acclaimed photographer Pieter Ten Hoopen captured the moment – it’s one of many in his series The Migrant Caravan which won the Spot News Stories category in this year's World Press Photo Contest.
The Migrant Caravan: Pieter Ten Hoopen
The series documents the heart wrenching journey of migrants from Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala fleeing from the political repression, violence and harsh economic conditions of their countries for a hope of a better life in the United States. It’s estimated 7000 people joined the trek.
The photos in this series were shot in Oaxaca, Mexico when he joined the migrants for a short period of time.
For Hoopen, it’s about covering stories differently and offering a less obvious perspective. “In this case I was more interested to photograph their emotional world; say when they’re resting or what happens when there not walking and all of these details.”
It’s a matter of finding different feelings within a body of work, he says. “I could have shot only people trying to get rides with trucks or cars, and those scenes are very dramatic, those scenes are chaotic, but there are other scenes as well.”
It’s important, especially when it comes to big topics like the refugee crisis, that we create depth within stories, he says.
It’s not about being political, he says, but about seeing what’s happening in this world.
Pieter Ten Hoopen Photo: © Pieter Ten Hoopen
In another of his photos, a father falls asleep with his child. “They don’t sleep a lot, they keep walking. They wake up maybe about three at night and start walking at four in the morning and they will walk all day at least till about four in the afternoon, the next day same again.”
Truck drivers with empty loads often stop to pick up the migrants, like the scene in Hoopen’s photograph. “Many drivers, they tend to stop, and they tend to help.”
To get a better perspective, Hoopen interviewed a number of people along the way. Despite the insistence that people in the Migrant Caravan are migrants and not refugees, Hoopen says many of them are. Climate change and droughts mean many people who have worked on farms all their lives no longer can. For others, like two women who had fallen in love with each other and whose lives were threatened in El Salvador, it’s their sexuality that's forced them to flee.
While Hoopen loves the United States, he thinks there’s a bit of a myth surrounding the American Dream. “I should definitely not want to live there. Their healthcare system, looking to their social system, for me it’s out of this world.”
In saying that though, it’s a better world and offers better opportunities for some of those in the Migrant Caravan, he says. “There’s maybe no fear of getting killed or no fear of dying because of hunger, which is the case for many I think.
The World Press Photo Exhibition is coming to New Zealand, details here.
