VOCES DE LA TIERRA

Paisajes sonoros del Amazonas, los Andes y el Caribe

VOICES OF THE EARTH. Soundscapes of the Amazon, the Andes and the Caribbean

Photography and text by Diego Samper.

Foreword by William Ospina

Diego Samper Ediciones, 1999. Spanish only, Audio CD included

...All peoples treasure the old legend about the time when animals talked. It is quite probable that the wisest among them also treasure the legend of the trees that laughed and the stones that sang. To understand what the stone and the fire are saying we just need to know how to listen. These pages are kindly inviting us to join in the delectable exercise of letting go of the languages we know and to learn the many languages of the world, the voice of the elements and things, and the voice of those beings who always talked with them. Everything, images, letters, and sounds are part of the same search, the same wish, of recovering if only for an instant the deepest part of ourselves, that which makes us one with the swell of waters and sands, of roars and stars.

From the foreword by William Ospina. .

MAKUNA, Portrait of an Amazonian People

Photography by Diego Samper. Text by Kaj Arhem. Smithsonian Institution Press, 1998.

After centuries of reckless exploitation of the Amazonian rainforest, only a handful indigenous groups have managed to hold on to their ancestral land and traditional ways.

The Makuna, living in a remote part of the Colombian Vaupes are one such group. theirs illustrate a type of culture which until recently was widespread in the Amazon basin, but they also exemplify the plight of other Amerindian peoples struggling to maintain their identity in a world of turbulent change.

Photography and text by Diego Samper

Editorial Colina, 1992. Spanish only

Colombia is a historical accident, a territory demarcated by political frontiers which fail to match the biogeographic limits of the natural regions or cultural complexes of tropical America. Less than two centuries of republican history, five centuries of cultural and racial miscegenation, millennia of native migrations and traditions, æons of tellurian upheavals, of delirious creation of an infinity of vegetal, animal and mineral forms, of continents adrift, of oceans disappearing and cordilleras springing up from a sea of fire.
Republican Colombia was built during the time it takes for God to sigh. Magical Colombia belongs to the timeless history of America.

CARIBBEAN CARNIVAL

Photography by Diego Samper, Text by Mirta Buelvas.

Diego Samper Ediciones, 1992

Drawings by German Samper. Photography by Diego Samper. Text by Alberto Coradine and David Ernesto Peñas.

Diego Samper Ediciones, 1994