Life Drive


  • Photographer
    Constanza Portnoy
  • Prize
    Honorable Mention
  • Date of Photograph
    February and March 2017
  • Technical Info
    Digital photography

Jorge is 37 years old and was born with a congenital malformation affecting both his upper and lower limbs. One year before his birth, her mother had whooping cough and was treated with a thalidomide-based drug. In the mid-1950s, the same drug caused thousands of babies being born with congenital malformations around the world. It was prescribed by specialists as anti-nausea and over-the-counter sedative for pregnant women. It was mistakenly considered harmless.These regrettable events highlighted the teratogenic effect of the drug and, despite thousands of complaints, thalidomide continued to circulate for several decades and was applied for different diseases and treatments without any type of pharmacovigilance control of the patient. My project seeks to highlight the reparative force of desire and the bonds of love between a disabled father and his little daughter, beyond the social and aberrant injustices that threaten life itself.

Story

Every human being needs a bond of love and support to develop healthily. However, society has often shown that stigma, prejudice and forgetting are often the most common forms for a person with a disability.
Jorge is 37 years old and since birth he has been looked down on and opinions towards his body that stigmatize, reject and even condemn to death.With only a few weeks of life both the doctor who brought him to the world and his own family, they told his mother that it was better if he let the child die because he would still be unable to survive in this world by himself given his condition. Jorge was born with congenital malformation affecting both his upper and lower limbs. One year before his birth, her mother had whooping cough and was treated with a thalidomide-based drug.
In the mid-1950s, the same drug caused thousands of babies being born with congenital malformations around the world. It was prescribed by medical specialists as anti-nausea and over-the-counter sedative for pregnant women. It was mistakenly considered harmless.These regrettable events highlighted the teratogenic effect of the drug and, despite thousands of complaints, thalidomide continued to circulate for several decades and was applied for different diseases and treatments without any type of pharmacovigilance sanitary control of the patient.
My project seeks to highlight the reparative force of desire and the bonds of love between a disabled father and his little daughter, beyond the social and aberrant injustices that threaten life itself.

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