Years ago I took some time off from college and lived in Puyo, Pastaza, in the basin of the Amazon jungle in Ecuador.  I've returned twice to visit my aunts and our extended family. On the most recent visit during Christmas 2004, I traveled far south from Puyo to Cuenca. It was in Cuenca that I took this photograph of two young boys, one a double-amputee, begging for money and food. Wherever I am in the world, I find it impossible to walk past a human being who is begging without somehow acknowledging them. I think child beggars especially challenge us to think about our lives.

Before I took this photograph, I stood and really took the situation in: A beggar's bowl between the two boys--one has skateboard for legs, the other holds a lollipop. I felt a closeness between the two young boys, and I also felt that they too were taking us in.  As they sat watching the world go by, I wanted to reach out to them, but felt it was futile. Yet, that lollipop, and that closeness spoke to hope and possibility. Photography has the power to capture such paradoxes, doesn't it?