Photojournalism from El Salvador



Jesus Flores is the pseudonym of a photographer currently working for the newspaper El Mundo in El Salvador. He has a blog where he shares some of his photos and writes about some of the subjects. His work is striking. Here is an excerpt from his most recent blog entry:
Yesterday, a plastics factory essentially blew up in Soyapango. "Soya", as it's known, aside from being one of the largest municipalities in El Salvador, is one of the most dangerous and corrupt. The mayor of Soyapango is known as "El Diablo Ortiz", or "the devil Ortiz". There are some nice places in Soyapango, but the local government has essentially forgotten the people and local infrastructure and the whole area is like some kind of red headed stepchild.

Anyway, this plastics factory went up in flames. I first snuck into the fire itself, but this proved kind of lame and didn't provide any real overview of the fire. I happened to get a great point of view from this by running through the house of someone behind the factory and climbing on their roof directly behind the factory, and was lucky to get the cover shot of the paper the next day.
I'll plan to revisit his site regularly.

Comments

Anonymous said…
I have wanted to purchase photos representing daily life in ElSalv for quite some time now. Also, I have looked for photos of the Ofensiva Final, the event that ultimately led to my family's decision to flee the country. I'm sure that I'm not the only Salvadorian expatriate that is interested in images to go with the many stories we often tell friends. I find it unfortunate that only American photographers have taken the initiative of setting up a website like the one you pointed out.
Elvis said…
I went to check out his website and blog and they seem to be taken down.