Gustavo Santos lives in a Christian conservational community called A Rocha. He heard about our Photovoice cohort through a colleague at UVA.
Gustavo: I live in a community called “A Rocha,” which means “the rock” in Portuguese. This organization was started in Portugal in 1983 and is in 20 or so countries now. Each branch of the organization deals with a different issue in their respective communities. There are 3 total centers in Canada. Mine includes a farm, a conservation center, education programs, and internship programs. Other countries do not have as many activities as we do or as many people living at the center.
The picture above is a screenshot of a jamboard from our final Photovoice session. We each had time to consider all the photos we’d taken from previous meetings and create a larger narrative from them. You can see questions that came up for us as a group as we brainstormed.
Q: What do the photos in your compiled slide/series mean to you and how do the photos connect to each other?
Gustavo: The first picture in my compiled series is of produce and represents how my community is flourishing. We share our produce with our brother community and bring it to markets. I find it very inspiring how we can serve other groups of people with the crops that we grow.
Gustavo: The second picture is related to the first one–in order to share our produce, we have a lot of people who work really hard to cultivate it. Everyone has a role at A Rocha. The role can change, we are all ready to adapt and take on whatever job needs doing. The person in my photograph has done education, maintenance, yard work, all sorts of things because she is the type of person who can serve the community in diverse ways. In order to flourish, we all have to be invested in the work. I see a dialogue between serving and being served.
Gustavo: The third picture is of a baptism in a river that is being threatened by the development of our area into warehouses for industrial production. I saw a tragic and intense irony in celebrating someone’s life in a river that might die soon. Further, baptism for Christians can also mean life and death. For me it was so meta about these things on top of each other: life, death, the river, our lives. This came up when we were talking about community challenges in the Photovoice cohort.
Gustavo: The fourth and final picture represents a question stirred in me: going forward, how do I serve the A Rocha community? The wheelbarrow represents engagement with the body: you have to be physically connected with the thing to do work, pushing and pulling with a lot of energy. We moved here about a year ago when my life was employed by the community and I have only recently started working here officially as well. I’m still discerning what exactly that looks like, along with how I want to be a resident. I want to be a part of the flourishing and the hard work. The Photovoice process helped by considering my community in ways that I probably would not have otherwise. Looking at my community through the lens of my camera, intentionally guided by the weekly prompts and meetings, helped me see it from a new perspective.
Q: What questions/grey areas did your photos/compiled slide bring up for you?
Gustavo: I realized while I was taking these photos that yes, this community is beautiful, but it’s really a privilege to be able to live in a place like this; not everyone has a chance to live in a community producing its own food and focused on conservation, and some people wouldn’t want to live here even if they did have a chance. What do the things I learn here mean for someone who lives in a city? How do we help people who have no access to a life like this engage with our practices?
These questions make me think about the writings of Wendell Berry. Berry lived on a farm in Kentucky and pointed fingers at everything that was wrong with the world and the urban landscape, which frustrated me because I thought his perspective was so narrow. When I came to live at A Rocha, however, his writings began to feel more prophetic, like he did have the authority to hold such opinions.
The question that persists for me is: what now? How do we connect with city dwellers who don’t have access to land? Do we keep pushing for a return to an agricultural lifestyle? I don’t think that’s the answer, but at the same time I see such problems with how spaces are cared for in the city. I feel a lot of tension around balancing my belief in the importance of our work here at A Rocha and knowing that not everyone can participate in it.
Q: What question would you like to propose to TH blog readers?
Gustavo: The question I invite you to consider is: can we define ourselves as human beings apart from nature? The answer might seem obvious–of course we can’t be fully human apart from nature–but are we acting accordingly? I’m not 100% convinced that we are.
Q: What did you discover about yourself, your community, or your life through PhotoVoice?
Gustavo: One thing I realized about myself was how much I missed being in direct contact with creation–not just nature, but knowing where my food comes from, working with my hands to make a fence, sitting down to have lunch with people. I didn’t realize how much I was missing these rhythms until I was looking to take photographs that captured the essence of my community. Photovoice helped me realize how crucial it is to be thankful for these moments going forward.
Q: What is your biggest takeaway from the PhotoVoice experience? How was it overall?
Gustavo: The PhotoVoice experience helped me develop my attention to details and my ability to capture scenes that I found engaging. I think it awoke some of the artistic side in me. I think I saw the very core of what the photograph was meant to be when it was invented–capturing a moment that will never repeat.