Proyecto Andes

This project emerged in 1978, when Jaume Blassi, after a trip to Peru, and inspired by what he considers his teacher, Paul Strand, decided to invest time and effort in photographing the Andes, and leave a graphic testimony of his people, his landscapes, Its gods, its myths ... Since that date it has made numerous trips and has traveled the vast Andean territory to portray, in its environment, diverse ethnic minorities that live in the countries that the mountain range includes: Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina.

Blassi has moved through these regions with the awareness of an "intruder", but with a great humility that makes him face from the respect of beings of different customs, culture and way of life, to document their extreme conditions, the importance of its rites and ceremonies, its millenary traditions. His greatest achievement is having achieved that empathy and complicity with his models, which offer portraits of great psychological penetration, in harmony with nature. Jaume Blassi took almost a quarter of a century to complete this series, which is a job with many twists and turns. A patient work of observation, fusion, reflection, and, of course, revelation.

This neat process results from the need to conquer the image through trust, knowledge ... This book is an excellent graphic document about the physical and anthropological reality of the Andean mountain range, offering a privileged visual news about something normally invisible to the vast majority, a testimony that transcends mere actuality. The photographs reveal not only the attention, fixity and concentration to gather all the details, but a careful preparation that supposes a meticulous relation, that is not achieved breaking into scene of sudden and unexpected form, but with a lot of patience and a constant, sustained passion , with denoted waiting capacity. Throughout this series, the photographer inserts portraits and landscapes, treating portraits as landscapes and landscapes as portraits, with a poetic melting and modeling.