The Unkown Soldiers

In 2016, fifty years of internal armed conflict in Colombia came to an end after 6 years of peace negotiations between the Government and the rebel group FARC. Thousands of soldiers have been killed or wounded by landmines. This documentary project aims to contribute to collective memory building through the exploration of their physical and emotional wounds, their current activities and relations as part of their resilience processes, and the symbolic representation of their memories of war.

Photojournalism and documentary photography regarding the internal armed conflict in Colombia have focused on civilian victims and recently on the FARC guerrilla camps during its demobilization. Since 1990, over 7,000 Military Forces soldiers have been killed or wounded by landmines suffering mutilation. Soldiers and their families have not been visible to the civil society. When peace agreement was reached last year, 51% of the population voted in a plebiscite against its implementation. People take the sacrifice of those soldiers for granted.

It is essential to make the soldiers basic human side more visible, their pain but also their resilience and hope, in order to pave the road of peace in the post-conflict phase.