Polaroids From Colombia, a Decade Later
by Matt O’Brien
Matt O’Brien first went to Colombia to photograph beauty contests. The San Francisco-based photographer fell in love with the country, and the Polaroids he took over the next eleven years are now published in his new book, No Dar Papaya.
No dar papaya is an expression unique to Colombia (it makes no sense to other Spanish speakers, even in neighboring countries) that means show no vulnerabilities, don’t be an easy target, be careful.
For years I had a very boring working title, “De Colombia.” Then one day “No Dar Papaya” came to me and I knew it was perfect. The photos are about Colombia, they couldn’t have been created anywhere else. So I wanted a title that was very Colombian.
No dar papaya is not just an expression, it reflects a mentality that speaks to the historic and contemporary reality of Colombia — 51 years of war, a tough economic situation for most, and high crime rates. They say it is the eleventh commandment, and the twelfth commandment is “Papaya puesta es papaya partida,” which means if somebody leaves a papaya you better grab it.
I took that expression to heart in Colombia, and I would generally move around very alert, walking differently than I normally do — chest out, tough guy mode — to project no fear and to communicate to would-be assailants “Don’t mess with me. It could go badly for you. Go find another, easier, target.” It worked very well, except for the night I got attacked by a guy with a knife.
That night, in downtown Medellín, I was walking with a friend, laughing and talking with her, paying attention to her and not my surroundings, and I felt somebody grabbing my shirt violently. I turn around and this guy’s got my shirt bunched up in one hand, arm outstretched, and in the other hand, cocked back, he has a knife, ready to plunge it into my chest. There were three other guys, all about nineteen. I asked them what they wanted, they said my cell phone.
“It’s yours.” And one of them reached into my pocket and got it. That guy was prepared to kill me for a phone that they could sell for twenty bucks.
My concept for this project was always more expansive and diffuse — let’s explore Colombia with no set parameters — and Polaroid seemed to go well with that concept. No Dar Papaya has a sort of abstract and impressionistic quality to it, which I think helps to put more emphasis on the emotional content and less on the descriptive. We are surrounded by digital images. These Polaroid images offer a different experience to the viewer.
The camera doesn’t lend itself to action images — there are only a few in the book — because it is hard to compose and it is slow, and with the flash, you lose that wonderful color palette, so I didn’t shoot at night. But I think that the diversity of images does a good job of conveying Colombia, not with any pretense of an objective overview, but more like snippets, glimpses into the realities and possibilities of Colombia.
I’ve been speaking Spanish all of my adult life, and it was key to the work in Colombia, not only teaching, but also the photography itself, because you are interacting with people, creating rapport, and you need to get along and move around in the country. Without Spanish, you couldn’t come to understand the culture so well and make friends, and the work would reflect that.
