Sólo por un dólar - Just for a dollar (2018)

This essay is what I saw — exactly as I saw it — during the months I spent in 2018 at Escuela Nº 55 in San José de Mayo, Uruguay.

​

A rural school of the kind that seems to belong to another century, where the teachers carry out an immense, silent labor: in a place where almost nothing works, they build a whole day, every morning.

​

The tenderness of children never fades. More than once, I was taken back to my own childhood by small gestures — a hand held in mine, a laugh with no cause, a gaze that does not look away.

​

Over time I came to understand that, for many of them, school is not only the place where one learns to read. It is a refuge of normality that goes beyond education: the place where the day takes shape, where there is a hot meal, where someone calls them by name.

There they feed body and soul. Just for a dollar a day.

​

The project culminated in a photographic exhibition at the school itself and three audiovisual pieces.