Ahecha Yuty

Photos from Ahecha Yuty now hang in the Municipal Library, covering nearly every free inch of wall space, making pueblo-famous ten Yuteñas, all student-teachers in their twenties. The ten photographers will graduate in July from Yuty’s Instituto de Formación Docente (IFD) as teachers of Initial Education, and their community photos were taken during a period of intense work, study, and practice. In the final months of their degree work, these women attend classes in the morning and student-teach in preschools and kindergartens in the afternoon. Many care for family members--children, mothers, brothers and sisters, even soon-to-be-born babies--in down moments. It amazes me that the women found time to participate in basic digital photography workshops. But they did!

We often met on Saturday mornings and occasionally wrangled a bit of time away from their morning classes to talk about perspective and movement, to experiment with color options, to analyze published photographs, to practice downloading photos on one of the IFD’s three computers, even to make picture frames from old cardboard boxes. To be honest, the women of Yuty’s community photography project show more artistic ability than their supposed teacher, capturing the pueblo’s character in its church, flowers, families, motos, river, soccer fields, asado and chipa, even in its mud. (Yuty sits 90 kilometers from the nearest asphalt. When it downpours, a person can’t return from the neighboring despensa without mud-caked pants.)

More than anything, I came away from the project with the sense that many photographers had discovered something about themselves: whether it be a newfound appreciation for a mother’s hard work, a critical take on the local volleyball club’s exclusion of women, confidence in one’s ability to learn a new technology, or a more serious interest in art. I learned, thanks to our community excursions with cameras and my friends’ ribbing, to relax and walk more slowly, because I was failing to see a thousand interesting details every morning.
Amy Dickinson, G-26, EEE Yuty, Departamento Caazapá