We stayed (2024)
Don Colacho Sánchez, 67, and Doña Cándida Rosa Herrera, 67, in the bedroom of their home in Apacilagua, Choluteca. Despite high levels of migration from Honduras to the United States, which peaked in the 1990s, Don Colacho, Doña Cándida, and their children never considered leaving their native Apacilagua to emigrate to the U.S. “Staying in Apacilagua was not a sacrifice for us,” Doña Cándida said.
Dos Mundos (Two Worlds)
Olga Jaramillo | United States and Honduras
Organization: Freelancer
Photographer: Olga Jaramillo
Organization: Freelancer
Exhibit Title: Dos Mundos (Two Worlds)
Location: United States and Honduras
Inspired by Olga's Colombian family's experience of displacement during the period of La Violencia in the 1950s, Dos Mundos shares the intimate stories of four mothers from El Salvador and Honduras who immigrated to the U.S. to escape poverty, unemployment, political conflict, and violence. This ongoing multimedia documentary project, begun in Maryland in 2019 and expanded to Honduras in 2023, examines the intergenerational impact of their migration on their families in the United States, as well as on their families and communities in their hometowns.
Like many immigrants, these mothers inhabit two fragmented worlds: the hometowns they left behind and the towns and cities in the U.S. where they now live and work. Do they call both worlds home—the places that have shaped their experiences and identities? With whom do they build close relationships that make them feel at home? What limits their sense of belonging in both worlds? Where are they rooted, and where do they truly belong?
Olga Jaramillo, born in Colombia, is an independent visual storyteller based in the Washington D.C., metropolitan area. With a background in economics, she transitioned into photography, bringing her social awareness and experience in Latin American socioeconomic development into her visual work.
Her work explores the subtle and profound relationships between identity, culture, and migration. It arises from attentive observation and contemplation, and is expressed through photography, short documentaries, sound, and writing. Rooted in her upbringing in a large family and shaped by the experience of living as a foreigner in seven countries, it is driven by a profound desire to understand what it means to inhabit two worlds and to belong.
She holds a master’s degree in New Media Photojournalism from the George Washington University’s Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, a master’s degree in Economics from The London School of Economics and Political Science, a diploma in Economics from Birkbeck University, London, and a bachelor’s degree in Economics from Universidad del Valle, Colombia.
Her multimedia documentary project “Dos Mundos,” begun in 2019, was awarded the Women Photojournalists of Washington’s inaugural Butterfly Grant in 2024.
Make Comment/View Comments
