Michael Weinstein

In his series of eighteen color photographs of "everyday life" in the refugee camps of Sudan's troubled Darfur region, Douglas Mercado conveys precisely--with the help of his brief and illuminating wall texts--a sense of desperate and tenacious struggle against the most severe physical adversity and the omnipresent danger of violent attacks in a land where "uncertainty reigns." Driven from their villages by government security forces and allied militia seeking to suppress an insurgency, Mercado's subjects strive mightily to leech drops of pleasure from an unforgiving desert environment littered with spent shells, tear-gas canisters and ration cans. Their families dependent on international humanitarian aid, women wait in line for hours and then carry sacks of staples back to their thatched huts, nearly collapsing under the weight. That is only a fragment of the deeply bitter and occasionally sweet story, which Mercado manages to portray comprehensively in his few incisively chosen images.

Douglas Mercado shows at ARC Gallery, 734 North Milwaukee, (312)733-2787, through July 29. (2006-07-11)

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