POSTCARDS FROM PANAMA
4 X 6 / 6 X 4 inches (2001 to present)
The postcard thing started out as a very personal project: I wanted to keep in touch with a woman that had gone far away. In those days, we travelled around the city taking photographs for mogo magazine, and we began to see things with new eyes, a little like tourists. Almost all the photos were taken by other people: strangers on the street, accomplished artists, housemaids, or friends. The slogans and logotypes were inspired by the official discourse used to promote Panama in and outside of its borders. The postcards officialy became art at the 2002 PhotoSeptember Festival. I had the first series of 12 printed professionally, and put them on sale for a dollar each at the Panamanian Musuem of Contemporary Art, perhaps becoming the artist who has sold the most pieces in that museum. The guy in the photos is the part of me that still feels like a foreigner in his own country, and that fails to understand what that whole “his own country” stuff is really about.