Judicial Triptych
Black and white/color photography
120 x 300 cm.
1999.

Within my research on the cultivation and eradication of poppy plants, I came across a group of images that caught my attention. These images came from police files or the written media and shared a common characteristic. They were all essentially designed to explain, show, and even teach the institutional point of view on the problem of poppy cultivation. They revealed the ideological platform that assumes and justifies institutional action as a moral crusade. The destruction of the plant is insistently portrayed as an heroic feat against evil, also pointing out a close correlation between the plant and the drug, disregarding the complexity of the issue or the other actors involved in the phenomenon. From this perspective, the blame falls inexorably on the grower.

Among these images, I was particularly interested in one from the print media showing a pair of growers who had presumably been arrested for their illegal activities. The photograph, taken at a police station, portrays two detainees accompanied by the items used in their illegal enterprise. We see two poppy plants on a table, two small containers commonly used to collect latex, and two blades used to extract the substance from the plant. The staging is curiously repetitive, pairing different elements, such as the plants on the table and two chairs on the far right.

The work Judicial Triptych emerges as a response to this photograph, pointing out and making evident, through the juxtaposition of two images of my own authorship, that the construction of the image and its meaning is inextricably linked to the ideological framework that produces it. These images question this discourse and exhibit the poppy capsule as a precious object. They are conceived from the reworking of the activity of “scratching,” a repetitive gesture performed by poppy growers to extract the latex. In interviews with growers, this act represents the culminating moment of planting. After four or five months of care, the peasant extracts and sells the latex in order to make a profit. Therefore, the act of scratching the capsule carries with it a “promise”; the action represents not only daily contact with the plant, but also a mental projection towards a better life.

To create this image, I cultivated poppy plants on my parents' farm, following the same procedure carried out by the growers. At harvest time, I reinterpreted the act of scratching. I inscribed a series of ornamental lines on the capsule, adding symbolic value and emphasizing the precious nature of each incision. The decorative aspect thus becomes an added value that has an economic correspondence with the extraction of latex; although poppy cultivation is an imported and more or less recent practice, it represents a tangible life option for many farmers. Perhaps the most realistic of all in the production areas.