Finalist in Bioethics Art Competition

I received news that my image, and Dom’s accompanying text, was accepted as a finalist in the “UNESCO Chair in Bioethics and Human Rights Art Competition”. There were 225 submissions from 23 countries. You can see all the finalists here. This is the entry:

"Responsible"

On a photo shoot in an abandoned apartment building, I happened across this scene. Overwhelmed with the intensity, I wandered about in a daze, numbed; camera clenched in my hand, temporarily forgotten.

Chair, rope, knife, drug paraphernalia, blood-stained carpet: what had happened in this place? I could almost hear the screams. I noticed other items; items that would not be out of place in any number of homes: chocolate powder, peanut butter, children’s books and stuffed animals, mere inches away.

Did a child crawl through the blood to reach its teddy bear? Would a cry of hunger be noticed through a drug-induced stupor or heard amidst the wails of the tortured? I needed to process it all, make some sense of it. I started taking photos. I noticed, almost absentmindedly, tears on my face.

Who is responsible for this? What forces created this nightmare before me? If I were that child, would I want to live like this? I would reflect on that day for many weeks and struggle to make sense of what I experienced.

“When does the right to create life, supersede the rights of that life-to-be?” The right to bring a child into the world seemed so straightforward to me, until that room.

We value life, but not what becomes of it, once it is born. We use science to help create life, engender life, extend life: all because we can. But it seems to me, we don’t stop to ask ourselves if we should!