Map Of Latin American Dreams By Martin Weber

A teen-ager sits on the roof of a ramshackle home in Medellín, Colombia. She looks out assertively at us and holds the chalkboard on which is written her dream: "That my parents smile again." Medellín has a reputation as a dangerous city; it was the headquarters of the infamous Pablo Escobar, the drug lord who organized the terrorist Medellín Cartel war against the Colombian government. Another young man from Medellín -- posed shirtless to reveal a scarred and burned body -- wrote: "My dream is to die."
Nearby, an acrobat in La Nina, Argentina, contorts for the camera, her sign reading, "I want to be a lawyer." In La Habana, Cuba, a teen-age girl holds a stuffed bear: "I want to marry an American." A young girl sits on the ground at Maclovio Rojas, on the Mexico/U.S. border, holding a sign saying, "I want to be a police woman." To either side of her stand two other children: One holds a toy pistol pointed at her, the other slumps in a sheepish, head-down pose.
Through the signs, Weber makes his photography a platform for his subjects to tell the viewer about themselves -- they are represented as people with goals, dreams, desires, rather than just victims. Yet, of course, pathos remains in the gap between the opportunities that we perceive these people to have and the dreams they express.