The Fish Dies By Its Mouth / El Pez Muere por la Boca
Santiago Escobar Jaramillo
2024 — Colombia
About this series
The Fish Dies By Its Mouth / El Pez Muere por la Boca explores the resilience and resistance of people amidst drug trafficking and fishing. As the beach line connects the sea (or river) with the continent (or mainland), amphibious communities have long traditions involving music, dance, hairstyles, games and celebrations, as well as agriculture, gastronomy, tourism, whale watching and nature. Violence, paramilitaries, and drug traffickers permeate this peace.
Drug traffickers need access to the coast to get their product out to sea. During these trips in speedboats, they are intercepted by the Colombian Navy or naval force, and their way of escaping is to drop the cargo to make the boat lighter. Fishermen from towns such as Rincón del Mar, Sucre, in the Atlantic, or Bahía Solano, Chocó, in the Pacific, occasionally find packages that can mean a year’s income or one-week rumbas. Some succumb to this pressure; others stand firm in the face of the onslaught of illegality. Such macabre characters as Pablo Escobar or “Cadena” reigned in these lands and conditioned the daily life and rules of the community.
This work is a participatory and intervention project in which the community is an active part in the creation of the images. The contrasts between traditions (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.
Photographer:Santiago Escobar-Jaramillo
Nationality: Colombian
Based in: Colombia
Instagram: @escobart
Architect. MA (merit) Photography and Urban Cultures, Goldsmiths College, University of London. Editor at Raya Editorial and AÑZ, Fotografía Expandida de Latinoamérica. Founder of 20Fotógrafos, Colectivo+1 & RadioFoto. Visual curator of the Commission for the Clarification of Truth, Coexistence and Non-Repetition of Colombia. Fujifilm’s X-Photographer. NFT Resident of Voice & PhotoVogue 2022. TEDx Speaker. First Publication Prize FUTURA Felifa 2018. Winner of POY Latam “Nuestra Mirada”, “Fotogalerías 2024” Centro de Fotografía de Montevideo-Uruguay, SMArt Program Artistic Residency 2023-Switzerland, KG+SELECT-Japan, 2024 Ras Al Khaimah Fine Arts Festival-United Arab Emirates, APHF:24-Athens Photo Festival, SPBH Space-Milano, FORMAT24 Open Call-UK, Photolucida’s Critical Mass 2023 TOP 50, PhMuseum Days 2023-Bologna, Helsinki Photo Festival 2022-Finland, FOTOFESTIWAL and Photo Match 2023-Poland. Finalist 9th SIPF 2024-Singapore International Photography Festival, LensCulture Art Photography Awards 2024 & Aperture Portfolio Prize 2023.