Fragment of the Chapter "PHOTOGRAPHIC PRACTICES IN COLOMBIA", "II ASAB Biennial: Photographic Practices", Francisco José de Caldas Universiversity, Bogotá Higher Academy of Arts, 2006.

ANA MARÍA LOZANO, Historian, theorist, expert and art curator.

In the work “BODIES UNDER THE SUN” by Juan Alonso, photography as an indexical sign is the center of reflection. In an exercise that could be named as prephotographic, Alonso uses skin as support, and melanin as photosensitive material instead of conventional materials and supports. The idea is as follows: an image placed over the skin exposed to the sun will have as a result the trace of such image on the skin.

In this case, Alonso chooses to propose as image one of a body that will support the trace. Such a procedure produces a sort of curl, or maybe, of start-gap in which referent and sign merge: the sign is possible to be see on the referent, the physical contiguity becomes continuity. The umbilical cord imaged imaginado? by Barthes between sign and referent in this proposal never finds its rupture, and in an anomalous manner, the element is portent of the sign.