This young girl lives in Lebanon at this time, escaping the violence next door in her homeland of Syria. Her home happens to be the camp in which my photography was born, and she lives among the children of the children whose portraits were made almost 20 years ago.
She is quite the strong spirit, allowing this portrait to be made on our first day together. It was as if she had done this a million times before, such a natural. Her eyes are as clear as the Lebanese sky during the summertime, yet she was able to open her eyes perfectly in the sunlight. She is a sister to the girls just photographed in Nicaragua, to the girls photographed a few months ago in Cuba and to the girls in India to be visited in two months.
Her life is almost unimaginable for most, having lost her homeland and living in a tent city where even the most basics of life are absent. Unlike the children of my friends, she cannot attend a school, lacks a place to bathe herself or to attend to her needs in private. She presents herself to the world in this portrait with only the positive, perhaps as if to shield us from the difficulties she faces on an hourly basis. I admire her without limits, and see her as a true hero in this most difficult world.
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Note: This image was made with a Hasselblad 555 ELD/180 mm combination.
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