Mari Carmen Orizondo

When we travel a maritime traverse, we can only view the sea and more sea. That immense sea that we face prevents us from seeing the shore. A traverse through unknown and threatening waters, prevents us from thinking about the shore. We only think about the wide sea we need to cross despite knowing that we are only 90 miles from one shore to the other and that we can see the lights of our destination from a distance.
To cast yourself at sea, on a precarious boat, alone, with an unknown marine, fleeing from persecution and jail makes this traverse even more difficult and full of uncertainty. The misfortune of always trying to escape is a suffering one, but uncertainty augments that terrible misfortune and the hope to reach the destination is converted in anguish when we deal with one that we encounter as we cross the broad sea. The doubt about what awaits us as we cross those 90 miles, is the worst of all the miseries until the reality of arriving demonstrates the contrary. That stretch of sea would be converted for decades in an expressway towards freedom, and in a graveyard of thousands of improvised navigators. As those 90 miles are crossed, leaving behind the coast, begins our pilgrimage, our travels as a refugee and we begin to feel uprooted, which definitely is something you feel and is augmented with the passing of the years. As a remembrance of that traverse, we treasure those objects that accompanies us on our travel; the only things that physically remains.
The simple things that accompanied her on her trip; a black blouse, a pair of pants, a pair of shoes, a sunglass, a jacket are shown up-close. I use details of each one of these. With this photos I want the spectator to draw near to this history behind these images. With the clothing I am attracted to details; of the blouse, the white buttons over the black background; the zipper on the pants; the shoelaces and the tears on the shoe; the sand on the glass of the sunglasses. She lived that pilgrimage that lasted for 54 years and whose memories were taken to her tomb.
2021