Nicaragua is the second poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. In the early 1990’s I traveled there to make formal portraits of villagers in Larreynaga, a small, rural pueblo. Twenty years later, I returned to remake their images, and to learn about their lives since I last connected with them.

For the most part, little had changed in terms of their standard of living. Nevertheless, most people expressed optimism, and a deep faith in the strength of God to help them endure the stressors and hardships of poverty.

The resulting images of these campesinos, frozen in time across twenty years, seem to pull in opposite directions: while they mark the passage of time, they also remain timeless. These villagers taught me, above all else, what the countenance of hope looks like.