Jorge Panchoaga, Colombia
Savage (June-August 2017)
www.jorgepanchoaga.com
Project in collaboration with SMArt (Sustainable Mountain Art)
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Nature exists. To arrange it and give it a sense for our aims is something arising from the needs and the experiences we have chosen as masters. Adjustment is mutual—nature largely lives for us, we model it and it equally models us. Whoever visit the Verzasca Valley is exposed to all what nature and human being recount us. The story depends on who guides us, on what we find along the path—to imagine the future changes, to remember the past scenarios, to create a mirror between our fears and calm.
I walked through these passages into the night darkness. In them I tried to build a bridge to the unknown, towards those things the path didn’t tell me, towards what the men’s words didn’t say: the untamed, the savage. I put the incomprehensible aspect of nature over the human landscape, creating a new possible scenario where the human being faces what he doesn’t know, where we have to try again to understand, and to win the battle against an apparently indomitable entity.
A confrontation, where we go back to being small, as small as any other animal. And in this new scenario we get captured by nature once again.
La natura c’è. Ordinarla, darle un senso per il nostro uso è qualcosa che sorge dalle necessità e dal vissuto che abbiamo selezionato come insegnamenti. L’adattamento è reciproco, in buona parte la natura vive per noi, noi la modelliamo e allo stesso tempo lei modella noi. Chiunque visiti la Valle Verzasca si vede esposto a tutto ciò che la natura e l’essere umano ci narrano; questo racconto dipende da chi ci guida, da quello che troviamo lungo il cammino. Immaginare i cambiamenti del futuro, rimembrare gli scenari del passato, costruire uno specchio tra le nostre paure e la calma.
Ho percorso questi passaggi nel buio della notte, in essi ho tentato di costruire un ponte verso l’ignoto, verso le cose che il cammino non mi raccontava, verso quello che le parole degli uomini non mi dicevano: l’indomabile, il selvaggio. Ho sovrapposto al paesaggio umano l’indecifrabile della natura, ho costruito un nuovo scenario possibile: dove l’umano si confronta con quello che non conosce, dove dobbiamo nuovamente cercare di capire e vincere la battaglia contro un’entità apparentemente indomabile.
Un faccia a faccia, dove torniamo a essere piccoli, così piccoli come qualunque altro animale. E in questo scenario ci facciamo nuovamente catturare dalla natura.
“There are some realities lying under the surface of what we observe. Truths that lift up out of the blue, as a sea monster which rises to the surface and then disappears. Entering this unknown world is a way to me to tempt these monsters to emerge, it’s like building a bridge these creatures can get through to what is real and familiar to us. This beautiful space, where imagination and reality meet, is where love, tears and happiness exist. This is the place. This is where we live.”
Nick Cave
Sonogno, Valle Verzasca
9.2017
Jorge Panchoaga
Anthoropologist from the Universidad del Cauca (Colombia) and specialist in photography from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. His photographic work keep a close relation with socio-cultural issues of the identity, memory, language, cultural change by conflict and the relatión between the human being with its enviroment, in cotidianity and intimacy spaces. He had exposed in different spaces in Colombia and had been published in many different books. He had been awarded as winner with the IX Premio Nacional Colombo Suizo de Fotografía del Ministerio de Cultura, also He is the winner of the Sexto Salón De Arte Joven, he earned the second place in the III Premio Nacional de Fotografía del Patrimonio Cultural de la Nación del Ministerio de Cultura; He had been intern of Worl Press Photo, studied the technical certificate of Fotonarrativa y Nuevos Medios in the foundation Pedro Meyer. Jorge is an active member of Colectivo de Fotografía +1.
http://sustainablemountainart.ch