The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)/Nicaragua invited me to take photos of pregnant teens to accompany their data reports. To locate girls and women that might be interested, I contacted everyone I knew in country – doctors, health workers, women’s groups, PCV’s and friends. The overarching theme was teen pregnancy, but the issues and subtexts are myriad: abuse, violence, fear, curiosity about sex, lack of knowledge about sex or availability of contraceptives, lack of opportunities for education or development… and the list goes on.
I was able to develop the project far beyond their goals. It became a book with photographs that let the women and girls talk about their lives and why they got pregnant. For me, the publication was a tool that showed the women that they weren’t alone, a tool that could be used to create a dialogue, and hopefully a better understanding of the situations and circumstances surrounding teen pregnancy.
Photographic projects sometimes take on a life of their own… After 10 years the United Nations had not published the book. I let them know that I was finishing it with or without their help. Not only did I get their support, but they returned the rights to me.There were originally 70 women/girls that I had interviewed and photographed throughout the country. It took another 2 ½ years to find and re-interview the women that we could locate, 17 of which agreed to continue their participation. We finally published Entre querés y quisieras, el embarazo de las niñas (Between Wishing and Needing, the pregnancy of children) in 2009. I spent another 3 years after the publication developing bilingual educational materials to accompany the book.
To see the photos for this project, click here.
To see the educational packet, click here.
For more information write michaele@mlcozzi.net
Or to see some of what we were doing, visit our blog entrequeresyquisieras.blogspot.com