Roads

My Photo scholarship 2011 entry

Colombia | Tuesday, November 8, 2011 | 4 photos

The story starts in the Palagua Swamp, a little quay inhabited only by fishers, old men and women descendant from Africans and indigenous peoples, living in a town that before was a place where the money circulated in big amounts; now they are impoverished houses, but at the same time, places where the dance takes place, where the canoes still preserve the party’s soul.I am journeying to San Basilio del Palenque, looking for rivers and lakes, while I cross the railways in a small wood railcar that I borrowed. The railways, built with thousands of trees, in other times transported people, and now, only charcoal. There are not ways without people. It is the time of wind, and the children return from a school day, a day of kites. The wind is a means and these kites are a vehicle through other lands, in a journey of freedom that doesn’t cost anything, only to be lucky with the wind. I arrive in San Basilio del Palenque, a town inhabited by African descendants, slaves that founded their freedom in the “Palenques”, places that in the colony period were created by the slaves who escaped from the colonizers. While I am entering into the place I hear the live music, traditional marimba melodies.I should be selected because I can grasp in the photographs what each situation made me feel, and I can convey that photographically. I need to be trained in order to develop my skills, which, together with my adventurous soul, would result in an excellent photographic project. I took the photographs while working in an environmental project, which aim was to protect the water against the pollution. The images I took were a useful way for raising awareness among the people of those communities about their role in the protection of the natural resources.