African people were brought to Colombia as slave labor in the 1800s, but many escaped and ran west into indigenous territory. Many of these escapees made their way to the west coast, where they formed collectively organized communities. the Choco province of Colombia has the highest concentration of people of African descent (about 80% of the population). Land their is still primarily collectively owned.
Due to the violence of the drug trade, political conflicts and illegal gold mining, much of the Afro-Colombian population of Choco has experience violent displacement.
Afro-Colombian
Displaced: Quotidian Scenes from Western Colombia
(a work-in-progress film ) Directed and filmed by Karl Frost in collaboration with Dr Cody Ross of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany Filmed in Choco and Risaralda in Western Colombia, the film juxtaposes scenes of daily life with excerpts of interviews about varying experiences of violent displacement. Colombia has an estimated […]
Quotidian Scenes
an exhibition of photographic anthropology by Karl Frost at the Max Planck Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig April 18 – July 30, 2019 Deutscher Platz 6, Leipzig open hours 8:00 – 18:00 These photos and video stills were taken from the network of field sites associated with the Department of Human Behavior, Ecology, and […]
video collage from Bahia Solano, Chocó, Colombia
Bahia Solano, is a coastal town in Chocó, a province or “department” of Colombia on the Pacific coast. The legal economy there relies heavily on fishing, but it is also part of one of many transportation routes in the cocaine trade. Chocó itself is historically the center of Afro-Colombian community. Many Africans escaped slavery and […]
Photographs from Chocó
Colombia has over 10 million people who have been displaced internally due to the violence there, fueled by politics, the drug economy, and illegal gold mining with dozens of armed organizations fighting for control of lucrative territories: paramilitaries, guerrillas, and more straightforward drug cartels. That is more people than have been displaced during the recent […]