“Finding Fernanda,” the first book by the photojournalist and investigative reporter Erin Siegal, uncovers pervasive fraud in the international adoption industry, specifically between Guatemala and the U.S. It’s not a photo book, but photographs are central to its conception.
The story began in December of 2007, when, on vacation in Guatemala, Siegal found herself surrounded by over a dozen American couples leaving Guatemala City airport with newly adopted children. “There was something very surreal about the scene because of the quantity of children leaving,” Siegal told me. “At first, I thought I’d shoot a simple photo story on international adoption, using images alone, and maybe some audio, but the more clips I read, the more I realized that the subject matter didn’t seem well-suited to visual reportage.” Nonetheless, as her reporting unfolded, Siegal found herself relying more and more on photography as a tool to inform her writing. “I needed to be able to describe scenes visually in the book, to keep things vivid, and it really helped having photos and video to rely on for description,” she said. Photos alone would not be able to tell the complex story Siegal was uncovering, but the story could not be told without them, either. “The road to this book included a lot of reflection on photography and the limitations of the craft, in terms of being able to tell in-depth investigative human rights stories,” Siegal told me. “I never meant to write a book; the story simply demanded it.”
On Saturday, Siegal will celebrate the publication of “Finding Fernanda” at powerHouse Books in Brooklyn. Here’s a selection of photographs from her reporting.
