MADRES TERRA.; Sebastián Ramírez; MAFAPO

Manizales, Colombia: Raya Editorial, 2022. Offset 15 black and white portraits and 30 color archive photos. Covers with saddle red stich binding with small lead ball hanging from red stich, plus one booklet (24 pages, 18 cm). NOTE: The photobook has a Japanese style binding (Oriental double folded pages), which allows breaking them with a thread where a piece of lead hangs. Paradoxically, the lead ('plomazo") was the one that caused the death of their children. Since 2008, photographer Carlos Saavedra and anthropologist Sebastián Ramírez have worked with the association "Madres de Falsos Positivos de Soacha y Bogotá (MAFAPO)" made up of mothers, wives, daughters and sisters of the men killed by soldiers of the Colombian National Army in an illegitimate manner and who presented their bodies as those of guerrilla fighters to collect financial bonuses for such killings offered by the Colombian government during the government of President Álvaro Uribe Vélez (between 2006 and 2009). Saavedra's participatory and performative photographic project "Madres Terra" is based on the interaction between the earth and this group of mothers, focusing on the roles of both mothers and the earth soil as life givers. In this photographic series, a new world is created in which the models, without any physical effort, are half buried. The burial ritual represents a special moment in which the known physical world is altered, the body changes, symbolizing these mothers' rebirth. A second part includes family archive photographs. The 15 mothers represented are part of the first group of women who made public the disappearances of their children, and whose efforts resulted in the revelation of one of the darkest facets of the guerrilla war in Colombia. Booklet comprises English translation of book. ENGLISH (booklet) AND SPANISH TEXTS. NUMBERED EDITION OF 1000.