Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Indians on the Wall in La Candelaria




These images appeared the other night on a wall on Carrera 3 in La Candelaria. A secret message? A curious advocacy for indigenous rights?

The English is imperfect enough to suggest this was the work of a mediocre Colombian high school student, or an unsuccesful poet.

Who photographed me? Do I know that
I'm on a wall in Bogotá?
I visited the website, which is in perfect English and tells the story of a wealthy country citizen who, during a biology test, decided to drop everything and travel the world. The website is full of videos and striking photographs, which are for sale. This is not the work of an indigenous person from the Amazon. What I discovered on Carrera 3 is part of a "temporary street art instalment of world photography."

Is this exploitation of indigenous people, who surely have no idea that their photos are on a wall in Bogotá? A candid camera exercise? A waste of paper? The website says that 20% of photo sales go to a village in Laos. What about an educated native English speaker impersonating a Colombian learning English?


Passers-by weren't paying much attention. 







By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

1 comment:

Stuart Oswald said...

I'd much rather here from the Indians themselves rather than some self-abnegation imperialist. Then again we would have to make contact with some previously uncontacted amazonians, that in turn would corrupt them to our ways of life.