Second Artist Talk: Gabriela Balisova

Collateral Image Portraits of Iraqi Refugees

Gabriela Balisova is photojournalist who uses photography to spread her concern for major social and political issues. She travels around the world and in the United States in order to document human tragedies and hardships. She has visited areas such as Chernobyl, Azerbaijan, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and has recently done work in the Washington, D.C. area with women who have been recently freed from prison.

Throughout Ms. Balisova's talk, I was captivated by her images. I have little experience with photography, but the dramatic light and dark shadows, the color, and arrangements of her photographs capture the anguish and despair that her stories that accompany these photos are filled with. Many of the areas and events that she talked about I was relatively familiar with, but seeing the photographs gave me a completely new understanding and perspective. Seeing the mutated bodies, the war-torn areas, and the expressions of her subjects erased all of the mind-numbing effects that modern news reports has left on me. Being told of tragedies over and over again leads me to feeling desensitized, but this was not the case with the photographs. I was emotionally touched and troubled by her images and I was disappointed to find that the lecture ended so quickly.

Photography of a child disfigured due to the effects of Chernobyl

The clique expression that a photography tells a thousands words seemed to underestimate the gravity and power behind the images that she captured. People are visual creatures, I believe that more activism can be inspired by viewing a disturbing  image of someone in pain than by reading about the same person. I admire the bravery that it takes for a woman to travel to dangerous areas of the world in order to share other people's stories. She is someone who is using art for a purpose, not just to inspire thought, but to inspire change which is the ultimate measure of accomplishment.