Las Flores de la Desgracia

I was fascinated from the very moment that I set foot in the Port of Tabatinga in the Brazilian Amazon. The landscape is unexpectedly strange; the port is surrounded by a vast wasteland of mud as far as the eye can see. Some studies confirm that the level of the Amazon River has not been this low in the past hundred years. These dry conditions have created many problems for the port workers and for the inhabitants of the area. Scientists have postulated various theories to explain the possible causes of this worrisome drought, but none can pinpoint the cause with certainty since the factors contributing to the climatic stability of the region are varied and complex.

The port constitutes a hub in the heart of Amazonia; its bustling economy attracts a multitude of people hailing from a variety of locations. Hard labour, misery and festivity jostle together in the suffocating humidity and 45-degree heat. Amongst the crowds of people can be found a large number of illegal workers from Colombia.

A lanky man sporting a typically Colombian hat attracted my attention. He ambled about timidly, trying unenthusiastically to sell the few flowers he held in his hand. He confessed to me later that he regularly steals the flowers that provide him with his livelihood from the Tabatinga cemetery.

As we talked, I was astonished to learn that he was highly cultivated and I was fascinated by this ambiguous and contradictory character. He told me about his voyages through Latin America and confided that he had lived illegally for four years in New York before returning to his homeland in Medellin, Colombia.

To escape the paramilitary who had ordered his execution, Para was forced four years ago to leave his ranch in Medellin. Born into a wealthy family, with whom he is now estranged, he has chosen to live far removed from “the greed, ambition, rivalry and vanity of that world” and has exiled himself in Amazonia where Para is waiting for the Colombian government to grant him a small piece of land promised to him as part of an aid program for war victims.

Weighed down by depression, alcoholism and crack addiction, Para expects nothing from life other than a small patch of land where he can “build himself a humble cabin, read Baudelaire and garden”. While waiting for state assistance, which for bureaucratic reasons has already been delayed by several years, Para sleeps on the pavement, in abandoned shacks or in the homes of people who take pity on him.

I’ve regularly spent time with Para over several months and his eccentricity, his gentleness, his generosity, sincerity, intelligence, solitude and sorrow continue to amaze me. We did most of the photography shoots in the port of Tabatinga and in the cemetery where Para goes to pick flowers, relax and smoke drugs.

Throughout this project, I have tried to express the feelings and impressions that Para and his environment have produced in me. As a result of my desire to widen my field of exploration and to discover my own artistic language, I did a lot of technical research and tried to let intuition, serendipity, and the medium of photography express themselves. I photographed lights, hues and people, without necessarily trying to give my images any documentary value. I took some images without looking through the view finder and others, without adjusting the focus on my camera. I also used pieces of garbage that I found on the ground, such as transparent plastic bags and plastic wrap and used them as improvised filters that I placed over my lens in order to create different textures.

I used sentences in a letter that Para wrote to me as captions for the photos, hoping that his words would provide a better understanding of his character and of the social and political context surrounding him, while broadening the possible interpretations of the photos. I believe that the poetic and nostalgic views expressed by my subject blend well with my own style of photography.

The research that I embarked upon has forced me to reflect on the nature of photography, not only as a form of documentation but also as a means of expression. As a result, Las Flores de la Desgracia invites the spectator to lose himself in his imagination somewhere in an impressionist world where feelings prevail over objectivity.