Echavarría, Juan Manuel

Born in Medellín in 1947. Coincidence or not, his personal story runs parallel to the violence in Colombia, as since the year of his birth, the country has never known lasting peace. He takes his first steps in the field of writing. In 1981, he writes "La Gran Catarata," in which he explores mythology and metaphor. Passionate about the oral richness of the people of Barú, in the Colombian Caribbean, he opens Casa Amarilla in 1986, a cultural center that promotes Barúan art. Following "La Gran Catarata," in 1991, comes a collection of stories, "Moros en la Costa," the product of his research in the Archivo de Indias in Seville and his readings of the great chronicles of the Indies. In 1995, he enters a personal crisis of creativity with the written word. His friends Ana Tiscornia and Liliana Porter encourage him to replace pen with a camera. Starting with "Retratos," his first series, he begins to investigate violence in Colombia through art. This investigation has taken him twenty years, a very short time for a tragedy with such deep roots. But what is more important: it has pushed him to leave his studio in Bogotá and venture into remote areas of the country devastated by war. His travels have not only led him to photograph but also to listen to the stories of the peasants who have experienced the horrors of war firsthand. He has known their homes, their families, their animals; he has felt their hospitality and has sensed the abandonment they are subjected to. Through the "Fundación Puntos de Encuentro," created in 2006, he supports war survivors who want to study and change their realities with university scholarships. The Foundation has also achieved projects, such as painting workshops with former combatants, to prevent forgetting (2007 – 2009).