Poverty's wrath captured through Photography

By Zein Salti

“Poverty” made its home with its tentacles spread to invade every part of the globe. I believe that I can capture this hunger driven cannibalistic monster and show its wrath inflicted on our earth through a captured moment, an instant of time, person and place affected. My camera is an extension of my vision; it frames my view to reflect a scene of reality through imagination, creativity and ingenuity.

Every person in the world has the right to live, but every person also affects the environment and community they are in. Denying the existence of poverty does not eliminate it. I find inspiration in taking photos of a human trying to escape from agony, pain, disease, war as well as poverty, abuse, tragedy, misfortune, and homelessness. My life revolves around photography and capturing that memory which will be held forever and revisited at a glance. I believe that we should all look at the world and surroundings from different angles and perceptions and more importantly to be open minded. For me photography is my answer to this, as I could study and tell the story of people's lives, their sufferings and their agony just by capturing a glimpse, a frozen motion that will last forever.

I truly believe that man's greatest asset is his ability to create and invent. Throughout history invention for the betterment of society has always come from the imagination of the individual. On a smaller scale, I have tried to be as creative as I possibly can in order to show the individual in our society that my pictures will change the world, or even that they may change society, but in the end the thought I have when I look at my product is: why not? Why couldn’t my few pictures show something that people didn’t really pay attention to before?

Zein Salti is an eighteen-year-old photographer who released her first photography book, My Journey to Self Discovery, in June 2008. Filled with photographs from her travels to Tanzania, Canada, Egypt and Lebanon, as well as extensive portraits and landscapes taken around Jordan. Her book includes photographs of everything from tribal African children to Bedouins and zebras.