For Jorge Panchoaga, photography is never just an image—it is a process of listening, dialogue, and return. His work begins with people rather than themes, growing slowly through time spent within communities and evolving into a living archive of individual and collective memory. Blending narrative, sound, imagination, and visual language, Panchoaga explores identity, conflict, and territory with a deep sense of ethics and respect. In this interview, he reflects on his method, the importance of imagination, and how time itself becomes the true engine of photographic practice.
How do you transform such complex and painful themes as social conflict into images that speak of intimacy and everyday life?
I tend to think that, intuitively, whenever we enter different contexts, we come closer to people rather than to topics. In my case, it’s the people who matter to me, the ones who make me want to be in a place and return to it. The themes arise afterwards, they surface, they name themselves, as if it were impossible to set them aside or leave them quiet, because they are part of what is considered important or have in some way marked the history of people or places.
When an unexpected theme emerges, I try to understand how it connects to each person’s life, through their stories and through what I myself know or have researched. I generally do not seek to address painful subjects such as the armed conflict in my country or similar cases. I spent nine years working on Dulce y Salada, in El Morro Nueva Venecia, a community that suffered one of the largest massacres in Colombia and a massive displacement. I never asked about the massacre. I listened to many stories that people wanted to tell me, perhaps to share with me; I listened and spoke with them, but I never tried to ask directly about those events. It felt distant and inappropriate to press into such a painful moment. Still, that did not prevent me from listening or speaking with them. During those years, I traveled there many times and photographed daily life—their relationship with the swamp they inhabit. Later, without intending it, those wounds surfaced within the work itself, like shadows, unconscious images that rise and inhabit the work.
In the case of Kalabongó, I visited Palenque on different occasions, without knowing very well what the underlying theme of the work would be. I knew I wanted to explore the Africa–Latin America relationship, but I had no script for what I should do. I was simply there, getting to know the people and the place, making friends. Little by little, the theme began to take shape: the stories, the ways people remembered their past, or the connections between certain metaphors in the images. That is how the idea of speaking about the everyday ways in which we remember came about—bringing memory into daily life, using imagination to reproduce those oral narratives we hear. At the same time, the idea emerged to tell the story of the struggle of the cimarrones who founded Palenque, who together with Benkos sowed the seed of freedom, of a territory where they could take root.
Do you think photography can become a living archive of collective memory? If so, how does your work engage with this idea?
Since its appearance in the social field, photography has been intertwined with the dynamics of memory. On the one hand, as a functional tool in the pursuits of State institutions (photographic archives, museums, registries, research), and on the other, as something intimate, familial, and communal. Family albums or the archives of local photo studios bear witness to this. More recently, social media platforms project identity narratives through images, creating a container of memory whose permanence is uncertain—lasting only until your account is closed or the platform loses relevance. These individual and collective narratives add up to the impulse we all share to make images and communicate through them.
My work makes sense when what I do returns to the people and places from which it came, and can be shared with those who allowed me to portray them. Part of that functionality lies in when books, photographs, and texts are well received by the people who lived those experiences and incorporate them as part of their images of life.
In some cases, such as Kalabongó or Invisible Mountains, my work has acted as a catalyst to open up spaces and pedagogical processes focused on the image. From Kalabongó emerged the idea of creating local workshops, seeking to provide both narrative tools and equipment so that young people from different communities could tell their own stories—the ones they considered important. This gave rise to Imagining the Fire of Memory, a methodology I developed and through which we carried out workshops together with Vist Projects. We have conducted 15 workshops in Afro-descendant and Indigenous communities across 12 or 13 countries.
These spaces are grounded in a firm conviction: that the image is memory, of course, but it is also a way of thinking, of building knowledge, of reflecting, learning, and teaching. We live with images all the time, and I am not referring only to those that surround us in advertising or social media. I mean that the greatest number of images are those that inhabit our thoughts, our dreams, desires, fears, illusions—our inner world. A significant part of our thinking occurs in images, sequences that unfold one after another: from the way we remember, to the way we desire, our thoughts are often developed in visual form.
The same happens when we listen to stories or when we read: our brain works to construct settings, events, and characters. Imagination, the brain, and that vast archive we have built throughout life—filled with images and sensations—are great directors; they are constantly at work, whether to solve everyday problems, to imagine what tomorrow could look like, to recall a past moment, or to long for a new life. Images and imagination are always there, helping us shape the world, the reality we perceive and inhabit. In that sense, I believe we should revalue imagination as a structural component of what we understand as the perception of reality.
You also explore language as part of identity: how do words and images intertwine in your work?
That’s a good question, one I’m rarely asked, yet it underpins much of my work. I’ve always sought to write—I believe a large part of my interest in words lies there; it has been a constant in my life. At the same time, spoken language and sound itself are fundamental to what I do. Perhaps that’s why my work has been drawn, insistently and almost unconsciously, toward film and video. Since I was little, I’ve loved listening to stories. I was fortunate to grow up surrounded by aunts, uncles, and a mother with a strong tendency to turn everything into a story to tell.
In 2010, in my early years working with photography, I thought about the emergence of individual identity alongside the consolidation of nation-states and national identities, and how photography had found an ideal social space to become part of modern life. Thinking about this, I saw the photographic portrait as unable to fulfill the longed-for dream or slogan of portraitists: to capture the essence of a person (their identity) in a photograph. Instead, I found in stories and words a key branching of what defines us—or is used to define identities. In stories, in language, I found what seems to me most crucial about identity: its fluidity, its constant change, and, of course, the fact that it is shared. Contemporary identity is a process of radical individualization, but I am more interested in preserving that collective dynamic that I find in language and words.
That said, in my work language and words form an essential part of the images that emerge. What I research or imagine when I read, or when I talk with people and listen to their stories—many of the images I later seek, find, or recreate come from there. These stories give meaning and direction to the images, as if through them I were sensing a place I needed to reach. The same is true with sound: for me it is a field in which I spend a great deal of time immersing myself in places. Since 2010, I have been making recordings—soundscapes, rains, interviews—that help me understand and build an atmosphere for each place and body of work. I also use them in exhibitions or with music producers to create soundtracks for the videos I make, and more recently, in the Imagining the Fire of Memory workshops, where the soundtrack for Dulce y Salada, composed by David Pinzón Cadena, is used in different exercises to activate imagination and memory.
I am deeply interested in words, written or spoken. I think of what some theorists point out: once you teach someone the names of things, they never see the things themselves again—they can only see them through those names and their conceptual baggage. I use words and sounds because they allow me to invite those who see my work to imagine images I cannot make with my camera. Instead, we summon the images that dwell in them, so that together we can explore the meaning of each story.
When working with communities marked by trauma or conflict, how do you balance testimony with respect for people’s intimacy?
The central axis of my work is not trauma or conflict, although at times I have worked with communities that have lived through difficult situations. In those cases—and I think in all cases—there is an ethical responsibility toward the people we work with. I make a great effort to ensure each project is done through dialogue and in a respectful way. I try to ensure that everything I produce is first seen by the people I have worked with: if it is a book, that they can read it before it goes to print, to make corrections, remove parts, or add others. It is a continuous learning process. These are not dynamics that are simply written down and followed step by step; in each place, gestures of respect, love, trust, or affection are diverse, and one must be willing to learn them. In that sense, every place requires a different way of working, just as every story requires a different way of being told.
When a story is marked by someone’s personal pain, it usually emerges spontaneously. I am not the one asking questions to rekindle those events. They are conversations that surface, that come to the table out of some need or desire. I try to understand the story over a long period of time, within the flow of life. Sometimes it never comes up, even if I am not looking for it.
In Invisible Mountains, one of the most personal and intimate works I have done, I spent three years working in two of the places tied to the stories, and in the third I have been working for 18 years. After those three years of conversations on countless topics about life in the high mountains, on the last day of work—when I thought I had finished and was ready to return home with everything I could do—I asked them to tell me their story, however they wanted. I told them: over these years we have spoken about these things; I would like you to tell me about them, in the way you would narrate them. We transcribed that audio, and with Marcela Vallejo we did a linguistic edit to turn them into the texts for the book. Then we returned and held a gathering in Ambaló, Cauca. We brought together the families of the three stories, held an exhibition at the Yalanda family’s house, cooked for everyone, and read the book aloud together. They commented, corrected, asked me to include more stories. Afterwards we published the book with their suggestions. These processes of mutual dialogue allow people to become part of the narrative and to intervene in moments where they may not feel comfortable. I understand that in many scenarios, time or needs do not allow for this—for instance, photojournalism would never consider such a process. If I had to work in that field, I would have to operate differently. Still, I believe it is always necessary to establish dynamics that seek horizontality, dialogue, and consensual agreement.
You’ve received important awards: how have these recognitions changed the perception of your work, both for you and for the audience?
When I began in photography, it was very difficult to find mechanisms to make my projects viable. This is something most people experience when trying to make a life in this field. The first years are always the hardest—not the only ones—when you have to work in many other jobs just to self-finance your daily life and ideas, paying rent and basic services while also buying materials and equipment for your work. In that sense, the photography industry, in almost every country, works in reverse. If we understand awards as a point of arrival, we should analyze who arrives and how; then we would realize what we really need are points of departure—stimuli and support at the beginning of projects, for anyone who wants to make a living from photography, at whatever age they decide to start. I often think of everything we miss when someone who wants to dedicate themselves to photography has to give it up because they cannot find a way to make their work and life financially viable. Imagine the wealth of good work we could discover—beyond the constant noise—if people were able to dedicate their time and energy to fully realizing their projects.
Some say there are plenty of funds, but in reality, each country has its own way of understanding photography. Calls, grants, and awards focus on covering certain needs of the moment—whether environment, human rights, heritage—while not all ideas or approaches fit into these categories. Photography has always been subject to Baudelaire’s sentence, in his logic of serving, of being the “servant” to other fields and interests. Yet in the margins of photography—outside institutional or media objectives, outside established genres—some of the most interesting work is being created, and it is precisely there that support rarely goes. That is where it should.
They used to say democratization of photography came with digital—that everyone could have a camera. Now we all have one in our phones, and yet it is still not a real possibility for most people to make a living from it. So I tend to think democratization lies in building the conditions that make the path easier for those who come after us, so they can truly decide whether they want to dedicate themselves to this work and genuinely be able to do so.
I emphasize this because awards and recognitions have allowed me to continue and to dedicate myself to one of the things I love most in life: working with images, with photography. And I believe access to these stimuli should be broadened and focused especially on the early stages of people’s careers, to foster the development of their ideas. I never work with awards or grants in mind, but they do help bring to life those beings that accompany us through our days—what we call projects. These stimuli help consolidate certain ideas, build confidence, and make you feel your work is meaningful. Still, in the day-to-day practice, doubts about what you are doing remain, along with the pressure to improve, the need to keep studying on your own to understand ongoing changes and phenomena. In a way, daily life and the intimacy of the work—your inner voice—don’t change entirely.
At the same time, the echo of these recognitions helps your work reach more people, bringing light to some of the issues you work on, which can give them relevance or positive impact in the places you have worked. I think that is the change that can happen in the public—that there may be greater interest in topics they might have wondered about, but hadn’t had the chance to explore in depth or see from another perspective.
Your work often involves long periods of immersion within communities: what does “time” mean to you in photography?
Time, in the kind of photography I do—in my more personal works—is fundamental. Perhaps not as an explicit measure, but as the necessary space for things to take an organic course: for ideas to settle and take shape, for relationships with people to grow, for images to appear, to emerge, not just to be sought or solved.
I have worked with many media outlets, magazines, and even fashion campaigns. In each case, time and needs are different, and I must adapt to the field in which I am working. Yet even so, when I take on assignments, many times after finishing, I return to the places where I worked, to continue the relationships that were started, the conversations, or the friendships. It’s not possible everywhere, but in some places it happens. With Kalabongó and the community of Benkos Palenque (as my younger friends call their town), this happened. I have returned over the years, continued working with many friends I made there, created new things, kept up the dialogue. In that sense, time in my photography is an organic field, where things grow, where I seek them, nurture them, and dedicate to them the time they require.
