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Colombia takes a long look at itself through lens and film

words by Milo Steelefox
image by Juan Pablo Echeverri

“Thank you, and see you again”, said the Photo-Me machine, coughing up my passport image - wishful thinking I thought, but such a farewell might not be in vain were it Juan Pablo Echeverri sat in the booth.

Taking his self-portrait is as daily as sunrise for the Colombian, and his Miss fotojapĂłn collection began years ago before he was even an artist. Intrigued by the perpetual flux of his appearance and style, Echeverri began to visit daily his local lab, FotojapĂłn, where an assistant took his portrait, his day invariably incomplete until that snap was made.

Even deterring his leaving the country for 3 years (he made a makeshift booth out of the toilet when he fl ew over to London), the introspective habit no doubt fuelled his adventure through identity and style. And a current 2685-image piece forms part of a photography and fi lm exhibition by six artists, exploring memory, repetition and performance.

Once More, With Feeling; the Photographers' Gallery shares that which Colombia might not always have been able to. It seems narrative weaves the works together, literally so in the Amelie-esque mapped sewn repairs to bus seats, poignantly oral in the songs of loss and pain after a massacre, and banal in the parrots’ war/peace dialogue. Vampires emerge from the barely seen or acknowledged goth subculture, and the violence in the bombed nightclub images lies in the absence of a subject, giving the viewer a tangible notion of panic and desperation.

Muñoz’s juxtaposition of dated and current photos studies Bogotá’s history of style, and his frenetic water self-portrait evaporating off a hot pavement evokes a fl eeting sense of identity, a gesture which encapsulates perfectly the fresh and intuitive spirit of this exhibition.

Once More, With Feeling
Photographers' Gallery, free
5 & 8 Great Newport Street
photonet.org.uk