On February 20, 1980, Jaime Tovar was kidnapped by the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) and forced to wander for months in the rainforest of the Colombian Amazon. His son Luis Carlos, the author of this book, was only a few months old at the time. The guerrillas sent his family a Polaroid snapshot of their prisoner as proof that he was still alive. This project starts from the search for this uncertain photograph, but it reflects a process of rediscovery that transcends the event in itself. It is a poetic exercise that speaks of our finitude and our contingent nature, which explores the heritage of the past as our only mode of survival. The absence of fetish photography catalyzes a performative visual essay that relies on the mechanisms of

“The book Jardín de mi padre by Colombian artist Luis Carlos Tovar is based on the idea of ​​'post-memory' as an exercise in imaginative reconstruction of lived experience, as a therapy spanning several generations. which gives voice to what has been marginalized and produces new empathies with the past. »Joan Fontcuberta, photographer