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Photography
My Grandparents
My Grandfather, Jose Drigelio Ruiz Bojaca, we called him Chepito, died. He was 98 years old. These are some photos of him with my Grandmother, Maria Aurora de Ruiz Espitia Casas, whom I naturally call Abuelita, and her sister, Luz Linda Espitia Casas, whom I dearly call mi Grand Tia Luz. I was blessed to be one of the last of my immediate family members to see them in Bogota, Colombia a couple of months before he died. My family has always been a big part of who I am, and I wanted to share a little bit of me with you.
I was spending some time in Egypt for a wedding, when I found out about this section in Cairo, the Northern Cemetery, which is not only a resting place for Cairo’s dead and buried, but for the living too. The vast mausoleum complexes they built were more than just tombs, they were also meant as places for entertaining. This is a part of Egyptian tradition that has its roots in Pharaonic times when people would picnic among the graves. Even the humblest of family tombs were designed to include a room where visitors could stay overnight. The dead hoped they would be remembered; the city’s homeless saw their tombs as free accommodation. This was happening as far back as the 14th century, leading to the situation today where the living and dead coexist comfortably side by side. In some tomb-houses, cenotaphs serve as tables and washing is strung between headstones.
I was intrigued when I learned all this, and decided to go and possibly make a story out of it. To my disappointment, I was met with a great deal of resentment. People did not want to have their photo taken, and twice I was asked to leave the area by the police telling me I wasn’t allowed to take pictures in this neighborhood.
On my third visit, I was lucky to be welcomed by the Abdil Rehnel family and see how they lived. My first surprise was how many people live in such a small living space. They told me that over 20 family members live together. The youngest was a seven-year-old boy and the oldest was a lady who was so old that she didn’t even know how old she was, she just stop counting a long time ago. Their best guess was that she was in her nineties.
This very warm family has been living at that tomb for the past seventy years. Unfortunately I only got to spend two hours with them before some started getting paranoid they would get in trouble by the police for allowing me to take their picture. I left Egypt the next day.
This photo essay is not about the temples of Angkor, but more about the people who live and work around these amazing temples, which were built between the 9th and 14th centuries when the Khmer civilization ruled a large portion of South East Asia. Sad to say nothing can be further from the truth now a days, as it’s one of the poorest and most deprived countries in the world recovering from its horrible recent history. I bought a three-day pass to visit the more popular temples, which are clustered about 6 kilometers from Siem Reap, Cambodia. Although these temples are truly magnificent, I am always more captivated by people. Especially the people who are ignored in the shadows of these grand structures, such as the people who protect them, watch over them and keep them clean, the people who sill uses them as places of worship or are there to enhance the experience (or take advantage) of the tourist. In three days I tried to capture the essence of this living space where even nature has a firm grip of claim, other than only treating it as a museum and photographing beautiful ancient sculptures.
Jayavaram VII, who had Angkor Wat built, the most famous of the Angkor temples, spoke of his intentions in erecting temples as being, “full of deep sympathy for the good of the world, so as to bestow on men the ambrosia of remedies to win them immortality….By virtue of these good works would that I might rescue all those who are struggling in the ocean of existence.”