Rpnunyez
D O C U M E N T A R Y P H O T O G R A P H Y
F11 FULL SCREEN
Rpnunyez | Field Notes: Human Dignity and Adaptability in the Face of Adversity.
TINDUF : A PRISON WITHOUT BARS [ 1996 ]
Barely a tenth of a second of life in the Refugee Campos of Tinduf, situated in the inhospitable North-western Sahara next to the Algerian town of the same name.
Around 180000 Saharans survive there in the present. They have been thrown out of their lands and forced to live in exile since 1975 when Morocco started to occupy what used to be a Spanish colony. It first started peacefully with the Green March (5/11/1975), which was quickly followed by the military occupation of the saint cities of the original settlers of Smara (27/11/1975). This last event constituted a war of attrition which lasted until the 6th of September, 1991, when the Settlement Plan was signed and a cease-fire took effect.
Other people, who have survived as well, up to November 1995 (although some are still alive), are hundreds of Moroccans captured by the Polisario during the 16 years in which the conflict took place.
These people are called “Liberated War Prisoners” who, after having suffered for 20 years at the prisons of the Polisario and having been liberated by their captors in 1989 as a gesture of goodwill, weren’t recognised by their own country, Morocco. This last decision was taken as their return as “war prisoners” implied the acceptance of the “Polisario Front” as the legitimate government of the Sahrawi.
One another, The Sahrawi and the Moroccan prisoners, victims of a long and cruel game of economical and strategic interests, exchange their roles as wardens/prisoners in an atmosphere of impotence, unease and aggressiveness: a prison with no bars.
SANTA APOLLONIA OR THE INQUALITY OF CLAUSIUS [ 2007 ]
In 2004 I started to get interested in the taste of the deep colonial past of Lisbon, where Angolans, Mozambicans and Europeans live in apparent normality and with an envious level of social integration. In that same year I wrote the article but as I came back I knew that I would return to Lisbon.
Normally, I plan my photography projects in advance of the entire infrastructure that develops them; in this case the circumstances interfered to give a new meaning to the project.
“The flow of things” wanted me to imagine this second trip during three long years, delaying it until August of 2007. “The flow of things” also wanted that, a short period after my arrival, I found myself thrown in the foyer of the train station “Santa Apolonia” with my ankle destroyed and my right foot plastered.
Fuelled by a strange blend of physical pain and frustration, I felt, for the millionth time, the execution of a universal law as unstoppable as ignored by our culture: everything tends to destruction and disorder. Life represents an organization level so insulting for universal chaos that to be born is to start to deteriorate as death approaches. This means that our existence is no more than a mere transit towards what?
Thrown on the floor of the lobby I clung to my camera, I took its viewpoint, as mine had changed and not only spatially. Its sensor stopped showing me integrations, marginality, metropolis, colonial characteristics. Instead, it showed only people, who, unknown to the superior laws that controlled them, lived their life playing, dreaming, planning, searching, observing, wandering, migrating; ignorant that the future only exists in their imagination and that, either way, imperceptibly or tragically, now or after, that omnipotent law, the Inequality of Clausius will end up prevailing uncompassionately.
It seems curious to me to observe how my project has been influenced by this spirit, reinterpreting instants taken in the first trip; like if a change in perspective with retroactive changes had occurred. This is one of the magical aspects of photography which keep me loyal to it.
FIDEL'S DREAM [2009]
It’s difficult that the complex character of Fidel Castro, loved and hated in equal parts, leave one indifferent. Many assertions have been made about him but few as certain as the fact that, during 50 years, millions of people have been born, raised, taught to think and live and have even died in agreement with his unique way of comprehending the world.
During those times, Cuba has lived submerged in a strange blend of abundance of revolutionary groups and a shortage and rationing of goods. It also boasts the lowest rate of analphabetism and child death in all Latin America.
I firmly believe that judgements coming from external observers about philanthropists or dictators are irrelevant; be it if they are condemning or acquiescent. The only validity comes from the people who benefit from the acts of the first or suffer the delirium of greatness of the seconds. They are the only ones who can legitimately judge, not so much his importance as public figure, but how his actions have conditioned their own life.
Few times, barring this one, has the Calderonian thought that life is a dream been as evident. In this occasion it seems absurd, if not dramatic, to observe the legitimate comparison between the life of those who freely dream and the dreams of those who are dreamed of.
PRIMITIVE BEAUTY
Teachers, butchers, midwifes, children, elderly, grave men, journalists, lawyers, lay brothers, sinners, prostitutes, monks. Terse skin or deep wrinkles that tell a lifetime of stories. Firm chests or those which barely remember what they once were. Athletic bodies, bulging abdomens, long-distance runners are all part of it.
With the fierce devotion of those who embrace a new religion or the scepticism of those who have nothing left to lose, they participate in their ritual of salt and mud; which resembles rather than a therapy of uncertain scientifically proven efficacy, an ancestral rite.
Before the daily dose of the smelly medicine, I can discern, even taking account of the vulnerable nakedness, certain characteristics of individuality: well-hydrated skin, worn hands by countless hours at the mercy of the sun, the discrete mark of a bikini or that of a T-shirt with a style similar to Marlon Brando.
The decisive moment approaches, the last step in the ritual: applied with visible signs of affect and solidarity, smooth black mud is placed like a blanket from the soles of the feet to the eyebrows.
Sometimes, only sometimes, a miracle occurs. I’m not talking about the dozens of stories, be it one’s own or from others, narrated with suspicious conviction about the multiple therapeutic effects of that clayey act.
The miracle revealed by my camera is of a different nature.
Masks of humid skin, slippery and impregnated with a strange sheen, akin to a primitive amphibian; or dry and chapped, similar to pachyderms, replace the artificial signs of identity of the anonymous recipients and, paradoxically, gives them back their original form, from which their sometimes-disregarded primitive beauty emerges.