The Descent: Memory and Territory

Abstract

This photo essay traces the descent from the Nevado del Ruiz to the town, not only as a geographical journey, but as a passage into the everyday. Through images and narrative fragments, it reveals how climate change does not burst in loudly, but instead slips in through silences: in the thinning glacier, in the lagoon lowering its level, in a landscape that seems intact yet quietly transforms.
Tourism appears as an actor that can either erode or sustain, depending on how it inhabits the territory. In contrast, those who live there embody permanence: their work, their rhythms, and their conversations show that the mountain is not a backdrop, but a home.
More than documenting a place, the photo essay proposes a reflection on the responsibility of looking. Because territory is not merely consumed or visited: it is shared, cared for, and learned to be inhabited.