"My wife and I adopted our baby girl, Carmen Laura, from Bogota, Colombia. While the courts processed her paperwork, we spend two months in Bogota waiting to take Carmen home.

Carmen’s birthmother gave her a book filled with letters, pictures and poems. “I hope that the hardness of the world will not hurt your sensitivity”, she wrote, “When I think about you I hope that your life is full of beautiful things.

With those words as a mission statement, I began making my own book for Carmen. In photographing the city of her birth, I hope I’ve described some of the beauty in this hard place."
Alec...