Marcos Ávila-Forero France / Colombia, b. 1983
This project recreates a snapshot of the armed and
social conclict that the colombian peasantry has endured; using a unique device to repurpose gunpowder, in the camps of the fARC
guerrilla and with severalpeasant families that live within their territories, at
a historical moment in which the largest and oldest peasant
guerrilla force in the world, is betting on replacing bullets for political participation.
Those bullets, used by the peasant to resist and express
social discontent throught armed confrontation, are
going to
be used to form a photographic image, their glare being the only
light source required for the appereance of the image: by removing the gunpowder from
each ammunition, setting it in some improvised container and lighting it at the moment of taking the photo, thus serving as a
flash of sorts.
By utilizing said bullets –which have served to express a reality through war- as the required
light source for the photographs, an analogy with the Colombian
social conflict and its historical context is being made; highlighting that, for a portion of the peasant population, the only way of stepping out of the shadows of history, of the darkness of oblivion under which they have been put, has
been through the
light of bullets.