![]() ![]() The book reads as a collaborative narrative, as well as a constructed memory to your countrymen and women - was this a conscious act when you set off to photograph the location?įrom the beginning we wanted it to be a collaboration. For us, this was kind of a symbol of reconstruction. Finally, we found it very symbolic to create a physical object in a disaster zone, this is why we made other colour instant pictures of the context of the earthquake. The concept of instantaneity was very important for us: the time that a polaroid picture takes to develop is about one minute, which is the same time it took the earthquake to change so many lives. After that, we asked them to participate in this project by deciding the background for their portraits and writing on the instant images what they felt and thought at that point in time. We went to the affected zones five days after the earthquake and listened to everybody who wanted to talk to us. Then we asked ourselves - how could we listen with photography? That is when the idea for this project arrived. In order to avoid a shock, we prepared ourselves talking to psychologists: they advised to listen to the victims. Many people travelled to the coast, as volunteers, but soon there was news that many of them passed out due to not being psychologically prepared to see so much human loss. We were not the only ones that had the same thought. Our first instinct was to find a way to go there as soon as we could in order to help. The coastal provinces of Manabi and Esmeraldas had no electricity and no phone signal, so we did not know the real impact of the tragedy until the next day. When the information about the victims started to arrive, we were terrified. The only clear thing was that it was very strong. The news about the epicentre and magnitude came more than an hour after it. ![]() There was a lot of uncertainty in the country after the event. The earthquake lasted around a minute but it felt like it was forever. Isadora started panicking and said out loud that it would never end. From there we watched all the electricity cables swinging, it seemed they were going to break. We did not have time to run down the building, so we thought the safest place would be to be on the balcony. At the beginning, we both thought that the other person was shaking or moving nervously (we were watching a thriller) but then we realised that the building was moving. We were watching a movie together on a third floor in Quito, Ecuador. ![]() It was almost 7 pm on a lazy Saturday evening on April 16th 2016. They recently launched the project in a book form hoping the stories contained in the series will reach more people in their nation.ĭo you both recall where you were when the earthquake happened in 2016? How did your personal experience of the earthquake affect the way you both approached the project? They describe the Polaroid photographs – in which people expressed their emotions - as brief as the moment when the earthquake shook the region. Misha Vallejo and Isadora Romero set off to the affected areas to document the shaken lives of the residents. ![]() In April 2016, a massive 7.8 degrees Richter scale earthquake hit the Ecuadorian coast. © Misha Vallejo and Isadora Romero, from the series Siete Punto Ocho / Seven Point Eight Misha Vallejo and Isadora Romero use a Polaroid camera to document and share the emotional turmoil felt by the Ecuadorian people in the aftermath of a natural disaster. ![]()
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