Atras del Muro

Exist back against the wall. Men and women humiliated by life, devoured by drugs, are facing. They know they are being pursued by the police, hunted down by the paramilitaries, and, above all, hunted down by the agony that is coming.

Text by : François Cheval
Publisher : Images plurielle
Release Date : 2014
ISBN : 978-2919436149
Book Size : 24 x 30 cm
Language : French / English
96 pages

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Exist back against the wall. Men and women humiliated by life, devoured by drugs, are facing. They know they are being pursued by the police, hunted down by the paramilitaries, and, above all, hunted down by the agony that is coming. However, in the Cartucho, in the realm of elementary forces, something stronger shot; a powerful desire to be, to bring this trial to a conclusion. Faced with the objective, some of them smile, even though they know that it is absurd. One by one, aligned according to the photographer’s instructions, they burst out of the luminous background, exacerbating shapes and colours. By accepting the photographer’s invitation, the excluded show pride and lucidity that cannot be found anywhere else, except in despair.

Nowhere is the relationship between empathy and photography more difficult than here. We are at the end of the testimony, at the end of the moral. The time has come when the wretches are playing games with the device and its operator. Without illusions, without real hope, they show themselves, in the expectation of a regained dignity. Because behind this wall, where they know us around, they send us these silent images, torn from fate and stolen from death.