POY: Medell Stories From An Urban War

By Mu Li

Conflict and appeasement, decadence and vulnerability, wealth and poverty, religion and drug, life and death. These are the words that characterize POY magazine multiple page news story, "Medell Stories From An Urban War".

I was awestruck by the cover photo of this National Geography photo story when I first look at it, and knew I was at the front door of a great story. There are photos that really shows what you would normally would not see, and stories that people would recall right at hand, but this is a photo story that contains the most absorbing drama and penetrating social documentary, one that people do not normally see within hundreds of thousands of stories. This is a story about people, and their situation in a relatively small country in South America. And you will know much more about their lives even though you are thousands of miles away.

On the cover is a tell-tale photo of a child bride gazing into the camera with scornful desperation in her eyes. She holds two rotten bananas in one hand and the painted face of a smaller child in the other, against the background of a filthy street of fruit sellers and garbage cans. It is as if she has picked up a meal for she and her murky brother. The photo left readers something to think about: Why should children become plagued with hunger and desperation?
The second photo seems to be the answer to this question. The photographer captures portrays of a hive of gangs upfront and upward. The half-naked guys peers down to you as if they are ready to hit you in the face, and make you wonder how much damage has they brought to the city. Then an array of scene-setter and detail shot put you directly in the heart of Medell. Multiple layers of the city life -- partying young people, a mother who has been shot, the rich, the rebels. Then the wrap-up photo of a small girl fixing aside at the side of wires, looking stranded.

While the entire story is left to be narrated by the text, the photos tells you much more about what it is like to be in a drug-plagued city and the desperate struggle of people to survive. The most notable part of this photo story is how the photographer has manipulated visual elements--people, items, setting--to tell a complicated story. What he/she did was to break up the story in identical scenes, and put readers directly at the center of the story by giving them the real-life view. This is something that is worth learning.