Christian Poveda

Christian started being interested in photography as the Viet Nam war began. His strong militancy and his will to show reality to people made him think that photographs can deeply influence events. He has directed a lot of documentaries all over the world. Since 1980 he has often been going to Salvador to live or work.

During the civil war in Salvador, thousands of people emigrated to Los Angeles in order to find calm. They were mostly former militaries. The were faced to members of gangs who controled several districts and began to extort money from them. So they defended themselves and started fighting back. The war of gangs was born. The government decided to help these families to re integrate their home country. So the war just got exported to Salvador. Two big gangs keep facing each other nowadays, having forgotten the real reason of their issue, and killing thousands of people every year.

Christian started to report about those gangs in 2004 after Paris Match magasine asked him to do so.
He had to meet with the members and directly go up to their chief in order to have the permission to stay with them.
He wanted to know why so young people would start such a chaotic and dangerous life.
He discovered that 80% of them were orphans or abandonned. They have no choice but live in the streets and go find a new family. Gangs are here to take them in.
What chocks Christian the most is not their way of life but how society badly regard them.
“People don’t try to understand, they supress them.”
Christian declares that repression has absolution no effect on gangs. The situation is getting even worse and more gangs are created.
Christian also spent one year and a half filming a specific group of young members in a specific location every day, in order to do a documentary about their life. (La vida loca)

Christian Poveda’s favorite photograph is surely the one where we can see a young couple kissing before the man goes to prison. It concretly witnesses the situation of exclusion and seperation.
Christian is going back to Salvador to focuse this time on the consumption of crack in Latin America. He also thinks of writing and directing a fictional movie.

Jim Lefeuvre