Tatacoa

"Tatacoa" is the second window of the series to open its doors. Here the atmosphere shifts register: it isn’t the humidity of the jungle, it’s the dry heat rising off the sand, the dryness you can feel before you touch it. This isn’t a photograph of a desert. It’s the feeling of standing on top of one: reddish sand warmed by a sun that never hides, sparse vegetation clinging to the dry earth, the absolute contrast between that scorched ground and a clear sky, almost violent in how blue it is.

This was the second piece of the series to travel, and it chose contrast as its destination once again: it was left in a house in Zürich — near the Alps, beside an immense lake, surrounded by snow and cold, everything Tatacoa is not — along with the same note: "I hope a small piece of my home now lives in yours." Today, somewhere in Zürich, there’s a house with a window looking out onto the Colombian desert.