Andrea Diefenbach

Andrea Diefenbach from the series, "Country Without Parents"

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/29/children-heading-households-in-moldova/

In her series, “Country Without Parents,” Andrea Diefenbach documents the lives of children in Moldova whose parents have immigrated to Italy to find work, leaving them to raise themselves. Moldova is a very small and very poor country with little jobs. Due to the lack of jobs, parents are forced to abandon their homes and families in Moldova and find work in neighboring countries, mostly Italy. The parents leave their children to either raise themselves or be raised by grandparents, sending back small funds and parcels of food to help with support. With little or no parental supervision an entire generation of Moldovan children are forced to become adults at a young age.

The image above is a color photograph that depicts two girls, Olga and Sabrina, as they get ready to go to school. Olga, the older girl, is helping the younger girl, Sabrina do her hair, an action usually seen being done by a mother to a daughter. The image is very grainy/noisy which adds the mood of squalor due to the lack of light in the environment they are in. The girls are in a rundown room with old furniture and a television that has a cartoon playing on it and stuffed animals on top of it. The contrast of the motherly action and the television with cartoons and stuffed animals conveys that these children are stuck in between two generations. They are trying to live the lives of normal kids, watching cartoons, going to school, and owning stuffed animals, but at the same time they are forced to be adults and do tasks that are meant for parents such as cooking and cleaning.

Although the above image is the strongest in the series and best conveys the message of the series, I believe without the context of the other images it would be unable stand alone. The series will not affect how I go about getting my images, but it will get me to start looking for subject matter that is completely unknown to me. Before seeing this series I honestly did not even know there was a country called Moldova, yet alone the social issues going on there. But thanks to Diefenbach’s images I now know of this generation of children that are growing up without parents.