Magic eyes
Subtitle: scenes from an Andean girlhood
By: by Wendy Ewald ; from stories told by Alicia and María Vásquez ; photographs by Wendy Ewald and children of Ráquira, Colombia.
Publisher: Bay Press
Published: 1992
Place of publication: Seattle
Language: eng
Number of pages: 180
Subjects: Vásquez, Alicia; Rural women -- Colombia -- Ráquira -- Biography; Children -- Colombia -- Ráquira -- Social conditions; Ráquira (Colombia) -- Social conditions; Ráquira (Colombia) -- Social conditions -- Pictorial works
Description: MAGIC EYES is a collaboration that grew out of Wendy Ewald's experiences in the village of Raquira in the Colombian Andes between 1982 and 1984. The book combines photographs taken by Ewald and her students with stories told by two local women, Maria Vasquez and her daughter, Alicia. Together, Ewald's students and the Vasquezes present the images and experiences of what Barbara Majuica has called "the rich Andean folk culture, in which magic and nature are inseparable components of equal value." The magic eyes belong to Alicia, who recounts her story of the evil eye, which she associates with the camera lens. Alicia and her mother powerfully convey the difficult life in the squatter settlements outside of Bogata. Great poverty and violence are seen through eyes taught from early in life to notice the magical; the results are deeply poetical.