Verde is an extraordinary book of photographs of the insurgents of Colombia’s Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) as they experienced their last two years as a Marxist-Leninist guerrilla insurgency (2015–16) and their first two years as demobilized ex-combatants starting to build new lives for themselves (2017–18). Published by force of will and strength of social networks, notably the Instagram account of its author, photojournalist Federico Rios Escobar (@historiassencillas), the book’s crowdsourced existence defies sophisticated structures of muting critical voices and suppressing critical visions. As one of the premiere freelancers in northern South America, a preferred stringer for the New York Times, and a brand ambassador for Sony, Rios Escobar is better positioned than most to swim against the current of image/imagination management in Colombia, though certainly not immune from receiving his share of accusatory blowback and rejection.
In an interview with Contagio Radio, Rios Escobar described the...
