Jorge Concha - Portfolio

Matarredonda

COORDILLERA - ARTIVISTAS Gallery - Paris 2026

SE SOUVENIR DE LÀ BAS – Expression and Memories of Colonised Territories, Louis Delgrès Cultural Centre, Nantes; 2024

RESTITUTION – Queer Archives and Memories, LELAC a L’epaule residency, 2023

Matarredonda is a photographic project developed over several years in a high-altitude páramo, a unique Andean ecosystem essential to the water supply of Bogotá.

The landscape remained largely isolated and preserved, paradoxically, by the fear surrounding it. Located within a territory heavily affected by armed conflict, the páramo became a strategic site of control and violence. Its inaccessibility and the absence of human settlement helped protect an ecosystem that might otherwise have been more extensively exploited.

Alex ou la proximité de la noblesse 1

Analogue photograph on ILFORD FC MATT paper

40 cm × 60 cm

Photo 2013, Tirage 2026

Alex ou la proximité de la noblesse 2

Silver gelatin print on Ilford RC paper, taken with an expired film.

40 cm × 26 cm

Photo 2013, Tirage 2024

The territory also carries a deeper colonial history. During the colonial period, Spanish authorities built the first routes connecting Bogotá to the eastern plains and Venezuela, using enslaved African and Indigenous labour. Some of these paths still cross the mountains today, cutting through the landscape like visible scars. They become settings for several photographs in the series.

Within this landscape marked by violence, colonial history and religious beliefs, I photographed different men—queer, gay, bisexual and heterosexual—brought together by the desire for moments of freedom, nudity and direct contact with nature. Their bodies became part of a broader narrative about Colombia and its layers of violence, silence, desire and taboo.

Saint François nu sur la montagne 1

Silver gelatin print on Ilford RC paper, taken with an expired film.

30 cm × 30 cm

Photo 2019, Tirage 2024

Saint François nu sur la montagne 2

Silver gelatin print on Ilford RC paper, taken with an expired film.

30 cm × 30 cm

Photo 2019, Tirage 2024

Matarredonda can be understood as a catharsis: an attempt to reconnect a traumatised territory with bodies that have themselves been subject to repression. Nudity is not presented as provocation, but as a way of re-inhabiting the mountain and crossing the boundary between prohibition and intimacy, inherited fear and the possibility of freedom.

The project explores the male body as a political and vulnerable space, the coexistence of violent memory and the majesty of the Andes, the colonial traces embedded in the landscape, and the emergence of Andean queer narratives that remain largely invisible.

Jouons à un jeu de ... 1

Silver gelatin print on Ilford RC paper, taken with an expired film.

50 cm × 50 cm

Photo 2020, Tirage 2024

Jouons à un jeu de ... 2

Silver gelatin print on Ilford RC paper, taken with an expired film.

30 cm × 30 cm

Photo 2020, Tirage 2024

The MATARREDONDA páramo is located in, what during my childhood and adolescence (80's and 90's) was popularly known as, a corridor of violence. An inhospitable and forbidden place, located on the road that connects Bogotá with the small town of Choachí. There, where the media frequently told us stories of the struggle between guerrillas, army and paramilitaries, the place that (according to the media and the Bogotanos of the time) was a strategic position from which to attack the seat of government and easily take people kidnapped in Bogotá to the impenetrable jungle of the Colombian eastern plains.

Cyanotype 1

Cyanotype on cotton paper

A4

2024

Cyanotype 2

Cyanotype on cotton paper

A4

2024

The people from Bogotá were afraid to leave the city and take that road, no one took the risk, no one bought, no one cultivated, no one built, no one urbanized. The town of Choachí was isolated despite being a neighbor of the capital and the mountain was preserved with irony, at a time when local legislation and the level of education were of no use to conserve nature.

MATARREDONDA has been my opportunity to understand that I grew up in war, without knowing it. Perhaps the habit to that reality turned it into my normality. Not only the violent political war of the country but also the social war that meant for me to assume my homosexuality in a traditional, macho and religious society.

Jorge, le plaisir d'être nu 1

Silver gelatin print on Ilford RC paper, taken with an expired film.

50 cm × 50 cm

Photo 2013, Tirage 2024

So it was there in MATARREDONDA that I allowed myself to really lose my fears. Every time I climbed those mountains and appropriated that vast territory I could be free. It was there that I assumed my fascination with the male body as a legitimate and essential part of my personal and artistic development. It was there that I really found myself as a queer, homosexual, artist (I was out of the closet before, but not really free).

MATARREDONDA was the opportunity to understand that there was no reason to pigeonhole or judge desire when taking pictures. It was the opportunity to take a risk, to invite others to be 100% genuine for me (because being naked you can't lie, nothing can be hidden).

Sur la montagne 1

Silver gelatin print on Ilford RC paper, taken with an expired film.

30 cm × 30 cm

Photo 2022, Tirage 2024

Sur la montagne 2

Silver gelatin print on Ilford RC paper, taken with an expired film.

30 cm × 30 cm

Photo 2022, Tirage 2024

MATARREDONDA was to question the scarcity of nudity in Colombian society, which, although it claims to be a "secular" state, maintains old religious values in all its customs.

Oscar 1

Oscar 2

Oscar 3

Silver gelatin prints on Ilford RC paper, taken with an expired film.

20 cm x 20 cm

Photo 2017, Tirage 2024

MATARREDONDA was to understand that I myself could become the link between a person and that intimate moment of freedom.

Thanks to LE LAC A L'EPAULE, L'ecole de Beaux Arts de Nantes and L'atelier Nantes I was able to have months of reflection, understanding and a lot of laboratory work.