Whispers of the Andes: A Journey Through Garagoa’s Forgotten Landscapes
Colombia is not just a country—it is a palimpsest, a place where history is etched into every mountain ridge, every winding road, every shadow cast by the drifting clouds. My wife’s lineage is woven into this tapestry, her blood tied to the soil of Garagoa, a small town deep in the Andean highlands. Her father’s ancestors settled here generations ago, in a time when the only roads were the ones carved by hooves and bare feet. A time when to reach the farm was to resign oneself to it, where leaving was as unimaginable as the idea of the world beyond these mountains.
I have heard the stories. Tales of hardship and war, of grandfathers vanishing into the woods, pistol in hand, pursued by the Conservative Party during La Violencia—that dark chapter in Colombia’s history when brother turned against brother, and political lines bled into the land itself. I have heard of survival, of resilience, of land passed down like a whispered secret from one generation to the next. And I have seen, with my own eyes, the mountain my wife calls her own, the land she points to with quiet pride, a place beyond even the isolated town of Garagoa, down a long and unyielding dirt road, where history lingers like morning mist.
We had driven an hour along that road, the mountains towering on all sides, their emerald folds cradling us as we delved deeper into time. Here, modernity is a thin veil—occasionally pierced by the growl of a passing motorbike but otherwise forgotten. Farms stretched out on either side, their fields tilled by hand as they have been for centuries. Rows of peas and corn intertwined in the traditional way, guarded by the thorny embrace of blackberries. Every turn down this dusty path was a step further into the past.
Her farm lies in a place so remote that when people meet, introductions begin not with names, but with lineage. They ask about your grandfather first, and from there, a quiet back-and-forth unfolds—an intricate weaving of family ties and shared histories, mapping out the unseen connections that bind one to another.
And then, the valley revealed itself.
We stopped. Stepping out, my feet pressed into the cool earth, grounding me in a moment too vast to comprehend. A great green expanse unfolded before me, undulating with the slow movement of cattle and horses, their bodies mere pinpricks against the enormity of the land. Above, the clouds gathered and stretched, their shadows sweeping over the valley like celestial ships, drifting in perfect harmony with the mountains that birthed them. It was as if the land and sky were lovers, moving in a dance that only the ancients understood.
Here, sound itself is a presence. The wind moves through the valley in soft, rhythmic breaths, sometimes a whisper, sometimes a sigh. Birds call to each other across the expanse, their voices stitching the landscape together in an unseen web of song. And then, there are moments—fleeting but profound—when even the wind and birds fall silent. A silence so complete, so absolute, that it feels like the land is holding its breath. It is a silence not of absence, but of weight. A silence that demands to be felt.
The green of Colombia is unlike any other—a depthless, living emerald infused with streaks of black soot, a color that feels as if the earth itself is dreaming.
Artists are the ones who must see this invisible dance. We are here to unveil what remains unseen, to bring forth the overlooked, to awaken the wandering nomads—too burdened by the weight of daily life to recognize the splendor before them, or the quiet injustices they pass by, knowingly or not. Somewhere out there, amid the rocks and tangled undergrowth, lay the invisible waiting to be found. A nameless stone, a stretch of land walked over a thousand times without thought, yet holding within it the whisper of something eternal.
So I walked.
Into the Veil of Night: Uncovering the Unseen with Light and Flight
As the current keepers of this land lay sleeping, I wandered forth into the darkness, camera in hand, the weight of the night pressing against my skin. With each step, the earth murmured beneath me, unseen yet deeply felt, a vast, breathing entity. The only light was the one I carried, a fragile ember against the abyss. Then, with a whisper of mechanics and a pulse of waiting energy, I launched my drone into the night.
Up it rose, piercing the ink-black shroud, and as it climbed, so too did the night unravel. What had been an impenetrable void just moments before now unfolded into a vision never glimpsed by the naked eye. A richness emerged from the darkness—a landscape painted in silken moonlight, where valleys, rivers, and silent roads lay like forgotten brushstrokes upon an unseen canvas. Beneath the drone’s gaze, shadows stretched and retreated, textures whispered their long-held secrets, and the hidden face of the land revealed itself like a dream only visible from the sky.
And then, the fog descended. A slow-moving specter, thick and shifting, it curled around the hills, swallowing and unveiling in turn. In this deep obscurity, where even my own hands disappeared before me, art lay waiting—shaped not by light, but by its absence. In the utter darkness, where time itself seemed suspended, I watched as forms emerged, compositions arranged themselves, and a silent order manifested from the formless. This was the alchemy of night: a place where the unseen found its voice, where the mundane was reborn, and where beauty, fleeting and unbidden, rose from the void like an offering.
So I gathered what I could—fragments of this ephemeral world—capturing them like fireflies in a jar, knowing that by morning, they would be gone.
Stadium of Unknowing.
These images are the first of a series from the Colombian countryside “Night Photography in Boyacá”. Colombia is a place I go often and have been searching for a way to capture its beauty which goes beyond the millions of IG photos or artist renditions of home and landscape. This set of every expanding image is my very small contribution to mankind’s understanding of life here on this planet. A very thin slice of habitability that is razor-thin and ever so magical.
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