What Remains
In 2006, I first arrived in the villages of Rondón and Zetaquira, in the mountains of Boyacá, Colombia. The road was long and difficult: vast unpaved sections, mud, stones, and steep slopes made the journey itself a form of isolation. There I discovered a community sustained by closeness, by a culture and traditions passed down from generation to generation, rooted in trust and in human relationships that ran through the villages, from their inhabitants to their architecture. This territory seemed to exist outside the rhythm of the rest of the country, with a particular magnetism that I still cannot explain.
These villages entered my life because part of my family settled there. I returned regularly, observing their transformations almost as part of a documentary process. In 2015, I decided to bring a camera loaded with expired black-and-white analogue film that had also been exposed to airport X-rays, without knowing what effect this would have on the images.
The landscape recorded in these photographs was transformed until it almost disappeared, turning the film’s deterioration into a parallel image of the disappearance and transformation of reality. What had been fixed on the negative by a chemical process lasting only seconds was also beginning to vanish from reality: the houses, the roads, the silences, and a way of life protected by isolation. Changes in access and living conditions inevitably transformed the region’s social dynamics and landscapes. Far from concealing these landscapes, the film’s alterations seem to represent the way a territory fades from memory. What remains is not exactly the place, but the memory of what no longer exists.
These villages entered my life because part of my family settled there. I returned regularly, observing their transformations almost as part of a documentary process. In 2015, I decided to bring a camera loaded with expired black-and-white analogue film that had also been exposed to airport X-rays, without knowing what effect this would have on the images.
The landscape recorded in these photographs was transformed until it almost disappeared, turning the film’s deterioration into a parallel image of the disappearance and transformation of reality. What had been fixed on the negative by a chemical process lasting only seconds was also beginning to vanish from reality: the houses, the roads, the silences, and a way of life protected by isolation. Changes in access and living conditions inevitably transformed the region’s social dynamics and landscapes. Far from concealing these landscapes, the film’s alterations seem to represent the way a territory fades from memory. What remains is not exactly the place, but the memory of what no longer exists.
The Door
Medium-format analogue photograph
Expired Ilford HP5 film altered by X-rays
2015
The Church 1
Medium-format analogue photograph
Expired Ilford HP5 film altered by X-rays
2015
Medium-format analogue photograph
Expired Ilford HP5 film altered by X-rays
2015
The Church 2
Medium-format analogue photograph
Expired Ilford HP5 film altered by X-rays
2015
Medium-format analogue photograph
Expired Ilford HP5 film altered by X-rays
2015
Houses in the Mountains
Medium-format analogue photograph
Expired Ilford HP5 film altered by X-rays
2015
Chairs on the Façade
Medium-format analogue photograph
Expired Ilford HP5 film altered by X-rays
2015
Medium-format analogue photograph
Expired Ilford HP5 film altered by X-rays
2015
Boyacá Castle
Medium-format analogue photograph
Expired Ilford HP5 film altered by X-rays
2015
