Behind Antonio López Díaz’s image of the inspirational Achta Derib is a story of how small changes can transform lives
The wall behind her is pockmarked and worn. She’s barefoot against a hard, cracked floor. And yet Achta Derib’s pose in this photograph by Antonio López Díaz, a finalist in the professional sports category at the Sony world photography awards, suggests reserves of determination that will carry her across continents to perform at the highest levels of her sport.
For Díaz, who has been documenting her journey since 2019, Derib’s story “stands as a symbol of resilience”. She was one of hundreds of girls from Chad who joined a pioneering gymnastics class at a school outside the capital, N’Djamena. Set up in 2016 by a Chadian Jesuit priest and a Spanish club president, with support from Spain’s Ramón Grosso Foundation, the class was the first of its kind in the central African country, where nearly half the population lives below the poverty line. Chad lacked gymnastics facilities, and the idea of a girl becoming a professional athlete in a country where female social mobility is extremely limited – three in five women are married before the age of 18 – seemed fanciful.
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