Published by Aperture, USA (2000) -
Danish edition by Gyldendal, Denmark
(with the titel: – Landet uden fædre).

- Saxgrens powerful photographs ask us to examine the pain of an entire generation of children at risk. In the end I would say that these pictures obligate us to respond, to do more than simply stare.
They demand that we look for an answer.

- Bianca Jagger
Human right activist.

www.amazon.co.uk
To buy the international edition
www.gyldendal.dk
To buy the Danish edition
Solomons House

by Henrik Saxgren

My work in Nicaragua began in the eighties during a period of revolution and war.

When I returned to Nicaragua in 1994, the number of street kids in the capital shocked me. During revolutionary times, when USA did all they could to prevent the social experiment to succeed, the majority of Nicaraguans was left in hopeless poverty. But even then, they mannage to maintain a sense of pride and dignity.
In the middle ninetys people seemed poorer than during the revolution, and they no longer carried that sense of dignity. Neighbors disregarded their neighbors. Familiar standards of decent behavior were no longer prevalent. Groups of young street girls were living with poor old men in the shantytown homes. Twelve and thirteen-year-old girls paid rent to sixty-year-old men with sex.
Neighbors and the authorities did not intervene because they simply did not care. I was very upset by these conditions, and I could not understand how they had deteriorated so badly.

It took me four years to realize that Nicaragua had become a country without fathers. The poor Nicaraguan men had little social energy left. Only on time in this century they had taken full responsibility as fathers, husbands and men.

During the revolution, these men gave themselves in for a dream. For a short moment (in historical terms) they actually believed, they could build a society without poverty for their children. But as the revolution failed, they felt betrayed. Today it seems that little social responsibility
remains. This social disillusion marks all members of society, especially the poorer men.

Poverty is a serious killer, but this is not the sole cause of Nicaraguan woes.
Conditions are not as severe in other third world countries, even though poverty is comparative.

The absence of fathers seems specific conspicuous in Nicaragua and this causes confused, divided, and broken families.
Public assistance is unavailable. Single mothers run the majority of
families without any opportunities for employment, and many only see one way to secure the little income they can find by means of prostitution.
So how do the young grow up in a society where prostitution relates to
responsibility?
A society where mothers disregard their partners’ sexual abuse of their
daughters for fear of losing the men.

My book, SOLOMONS HOUSE, work up this questions and put the church on trial.

March 30. 2000

Henrik Saxgren