Photographer Ovidio Gonzalez Soler is the Edge of Humanity Magazine contributor of this documentary photography. From the project ‘ Surco de Dolores/ GROOVES OF PAIN’. To see Ovidio’s body of work, click on any image.



From a young age, I sing the national anthem with great pride. At school we would sing standing up, with our backs straight, our right hands on our hearts, our lungs well inflated and our eyebrows furrowed – yellow, blue and red, the colors of my flag. I implanted a collective imagination that made me believe that “the horrible night has ended” and that “sublime freedom” has arrived.
Walking among the crowds, I saw the posters, listened to the harangues, I felt the strong patriotic sense that characterizes us, testimony to the presence of a true national poetry, I saw the flag of my country waving and how it was formed in the very ecosystem of the streets I saw how the yellow of the Sun got next to the blue of the sky and it hurt me to see how it suddenly conjugated with the red on the asphalt. More than forty days of massive protest in the country, with thousands of signs of extreme violence and dozens of deaths that have marked the memory of Colombians forever.
María Mercedes Carranza says in the poem ‘La Patria’ – “in this house the living sleep with the dead, imitate their customs, repeat their gestures and when they sing, they sing their failures” -, a thick, hard but effective X-ray of the lack of empathy with which some compatriots live, as well as this analogy of a fragmented and divided Colombia, chaotic and with no way out – “the windows show destroyed landscapes, flesh and ash are confused in the faces, in the mouths the words are stirred with fear . In this house we are all buried alive ”-.
In the streets reality is combined with art, discontent with patriotism and violence with resistance in a tumble of sensations that not even images can fully describe, symbols, people, objects and the atmosphere itself are mixed In a color palette that takes me back to my childhood – yellow, blue and red, the colors of my flag – all this chaos seems to transport me back to the moment when we were singing standing up, with our backs straight, our right hands in the heart, the lungs well inflated and the eyebrows well furrowed “but it is not complete glory to win in battle, than the arm that fights is animated by the truth. Independence alone, the great clamor does not silence: If the sun shines on everyone, justice is freedom ”. Indigenous people and peasants also accompany the Colombian population who raised their voices in the protest. Leaving their territory to move to the cities and face a national cry, lowering the fumes in the heat of violence and reflecting with the youngest on the false freedom that they sold us to the oldest.



Colombia is going through a historic moment and the thousands of demonstrations, violent events, aggressions, injustices, disappearances and even deaths prompted me to create a visual testimony, a series that shows the fury in the streets, various situations that are lived inside of the protests, events of tension and also of fury, the diversity and unity, the passion and patriotism that is felt in the air within the protest, the elements that speak to me of a reality of the country, the tears, the silence , dreams and thoughts translated into an authorial vision that seeks to leave testimony of an existence or a society furrowed by pain.
Just to close, I stand up, with my back straight, my right hand on my heart, my lungs well inflated and my eyebrows well furrowed to sing with longing and with my voice between cut “Oh unfading glory, Oh immortal joy, in furrows of pain, the good germinates already ”.
All images and text © Ovidio Gonzalez Soler
See also:
By Ovidio Gonzalez Soler
Ovidio’s Previous Contributions To Edge Of Humanity Magazine
“once a Ticuna man is born, a tree is born” Life In The Depths Of The Amazon Jungle
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