CANDOMBE UMBELE (2019-2020)

A project in collaboration with Laura Sadi and Cecilia Pellegrin

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The Llamadas of Montevideo last just a few minutes.

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The cuerdas go by, the drums fill the street with leather and wood, the costumes shine against the night, and shortly after, the last dancers turn the corner and the city returns to its usual shape. Those few minutes are, for most people, candombe.

Behind those minutes there is an entire year.

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This work was born from wanting to photograph precisely that — what almost no one sees. For a year we accompanied the comparsa Candombe Umbelé, from the silence of the night when one edition of the Llamadas ended to the exact instant when the next one began. Twelve months of rehearsals at the local and in the street, of drums tuned over fire, of hands sewing costumes, of choreographies remade again and again, of cuerdas being tightened, of bodies learning to move together. The invisible work that evaporates in the minutes of the parade.

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We made it together with the photographers Laura Sadi and Cecilia Pellegrin, fellow students at IMAGO. Three ways of looking, the same comparsa, the same year. The essay was closed with a photobook — Umbelé — where what becomes the protagonist is not the spectacle but the craft that holds it up.

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Candombe is, above all, community. And community is built in the hours no one applauds.

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Photographic project, completed. Made between 2019 and 2020 in Montevideo. In collaboration with Laura Sadi and Cecilia Pellegrin. Concluded with the publication of the photobook Umbelé.