Every Thing Passes

As if they were motion picture stills, the images in this book make up a sequence of people and scenes of the Calle Junin, one of the best-known thoroughfares in Medellin, Colombia. The concept of the book is the result of the fascination and nostalgia produced by the photos of passersby on the street, taken by the fotocineros, or street photographers, of the city. The texts, which are laid out perpendicular to the images, evoke the sense of movement ...of walking. In this way, the photographs - treasured souvenirs, for their owners, of the alliance of love and memory - bring us back nostalgically to a bygone age, recapturing the clothing, cars, buildings, advertisements, shops, and display windows that provided the setting for the ephemeral strolls of pedestrians in Medellin. For almost three years, from 2005 to 2008, some 400 photographs were collected to form the basis of this book, an exploration of street portraiture, of Colombian fotocineria, and of the snapshots of passersby taken by the thousands on the Calle de Junin. It is a volume full of echoes and reflections, of a few lost steps, frozen in time by the magic of photography.