The fish dies by the mouth

Juan David, a child fish, opens his mouth looking for food.

The hook without bait means that this time the fish did not die through your mouth. It will get a second chance.

A few steps away from the beach line, there was a ranch covered by a blue polyshade that protected from the sun. Although the undulations and force of the sea were within reach to be photographed, I found it more interesting to abstract the idea and think about the changing volatility of the wind on a textile body like this one. For several years, it has been a recurrent practice in my work to use polyshades or fabrics in clear allusion to Christo and Jeanne-Claude. The idea of covering is not only to protect oneself, but also to hide.

Saint Gregory, patron saint of the seas, and printed puppets of Pablo Escobar, called by many the “patron saint of the poor” and “terror of the Establishment,” wait in a coral of logs on the coast of Isla Palma. Putting Escobar in small, means changing the roles: here, the extinct narco is moved and manipulated at the whim of the boatman.

We used an orange metallic fabric to create a space out of context and highlight the back muscles and the magnifying glasses, like fish eyes. At the end of the session, Juan David took the cloth to play on the beach.

Colorful architecture in the village. Color is not just a layer of paint that enhances the urban landscape, it is also a way of expressing joy. In Rincón del Mar, Sucre, it is common to walk through the village and find colorful facades full of details. In this case, a shadow – or evil presence – seems to want to enter the house. In the first decade of this century, between 2000 and 2010, the inhabitants had to close their doors to these unwanted presences.

A fighting rooster is ready for battle! Cockfighting in Colombia is currently being debated in the Colombian Congress, as is sport fishing. For one part of the population, they are considered violent practices that should be eradicated. For others, they are part of their tradition and their way of having fun. This photo represents the borderline between one position and the other: caress and attack.

The fisherman returns home in the middle of the storm. Intervention with wooden log, plastic bag and dental floss.

We were trying to sail with a sail with metallic foil as a synonym for the impossibility of movement in the water, with such bad luck that we sank. It couldn’t have been better! The boat was wrecked at sea and its shape was reminiscent of the humpback whales that visit the Pacific Sea off the coast of Bahia Solano to give birth to their calves. I consider error and drift as a fundamental part of my work for going against the yearning for what we believe to be “perfection”.

Some of the medium format photographs are printed and plates are burned to experiment with the inks (CMYK color changes) and the “fisheyes” (which are dirty between the ink and the roller). Metallic plates, ink remnants and emulsions are intervened. They are re-photographed. Details are taken from the rollers, plates and machines. Thus, the plates, the successes and mistakes become part of the work as a symbol of the collective creation process. Other images are printed, cut out and taken to the field to make new installations or layers of information.

A fish drawn with dry leaves as a puzzle. Since I was a child, I always liked to disassemble and reconstruct. Fernell Franco, the famous Colombian photographer, used to say that he had learned to unlearn. This was one of the first photographs I took in 2016 of the project.

A man-fish, a fish-human. This image summarizes the project “The fish dies through the mouth”: fear, keeping quiet, covering the identity. At the same time, the representation of the human and the animal. I made it thanks to chance: the boatman was taking off his headboard to take a dip, and in that intermission between the neck and the sky, a face similar to the one in the photo was formed. I recomposed the scene and the background to get this photo that can summarize the project.

The fisherman holds up a coral. It is a weapon! Once again play and laughter resulted in this photo. We were visiting Isla Palma and stopped at an islet in the middle of the sea to build a brick wall covered with plastic, when my friend Federico wielded a coral and pointed it at me. I laughed. There I understood that we have normalized violent gestures since childhood, but in a context of violence and the presence of drug dealers, being pointed at with a gun is not a reason for joy. It is pure fear!

In front of the tombstone, a flower pays tribute to the dead of drug violence. After a lunch of fried fish with patacón and rice with coconut, the remains of the food were in the shape of a cross forming a tomb.

The cocaine shipment piled up on the shore waiting to be picked up by a speedboat. This was one of the interventions that required the most preparation, not because of its complexity, but because we had to get the bricks, a boat to support the weight, and be able to transport the load to the island far from the beach. Together with Deivis and Federico, we had several accidents due to the waves that sometimes hit the improvised wall hard: several bricks were broken and some rubbers were lost.

The “Narcos” and “El Patrón del Mal” series can be seen in all latitudes, even on a desert island. Television series serve as entertainment on rainy or lazy days. The stories that are seen there are not very different from what happens outside when there is territorial control by gangs and mafia bosses.

Double exposures with Instax of islets in Cabo Marzo, Bahia Solano. As a Fujifilm X-Photographer in Colombia for several years, I took advantage of the equipment to make my work. While anchoring (floating in a specific spot while fishing) and looking towards the islets visited by pelicans, I imagined the conjunction or dialogue between rock and sea. I photographed the islet and then calculated – and photographed – the horizon of the sea in the center of the viewfinder: each photo was a single opportunity. There was no turning back!

An octopus rises to the surface to observe traffic events at night. Hairstyles are a tradition and ancestral knowledge passed down from generation to generation. Girls, especially, learn from an early age to style the hair of their younger sisters. This ends up helping their mothers and older sisters in their daily chores.

The formation of chalupas on the return from the fishing day. I had this structure of small boats in mind for a year before making it. As I said, my work has a special interest in architecture and sculpture. Urban and landscape interventions, as in this case, are based on imagination. Imagination emerges as a vital aid in the construction of images through the evocation of metaphors, the combination of techniques and modes of visualization. The exercise allows us to project the illusion of achieving what we propose, from small to large; from representation to reality; from symbol to object; from individual to collective memory.

In the photo, my childhood friend, Federico Martinez, represents with his strokes a nautical flag while demonstrating his great free diving skills. The divers from Rincón del Mar are considered the best due to their great capacity for endurance and resistance without the aid of equipment or oxygen tanks. Behind him, Deivis Vecino Altamar, my other good friend, who doesn’t like the sea, stretches out his arms.

The fish dies by the mouth and for twenty years the life regime imposed by the paramilitaries was so fearful and cruel that on a whim of Rodrigo Mercado, alias “Cadena”, an elementary school was demolished so that it would no longer block the view of the sea from his house, located in the center of that place. Pablo Escobar, for his part, had hotels built on Isla Palma, while Hernán Vélez, of the Urdinola clan, built them in Bahía Solano, as a summer resort.

The project is a participatory and intervention project where the community is an active part in the creation of the images. The contrasts between traditions (peaceful or peaceful states) and armed pressure (paramilitary and drug trafficking groups) are expressed in different actions, landscapes, bodies and objects. Everyday life intermingles with the construction of the scenes. Here, the performative act is confused with the swaying of reality, as a song to that undefined limit between sea and land, between legality and prohibition.

Between 2016 and 2021, I have gone on fishing excursions with my father, my brother, my uncle and my cousin. We all have the last name Escobar. Our link has nothing to do with Pablo, but with the sea, the land and his sons: Deivis and Federico, friends since 1990.