Gabriela (12) hides behind a cloth at her grandmother’s house in Los Patios, Norte de Santander, Colombia. The house was built by her grandfather and uncle, who died due to health complications in 2016 and 2023 respectively.
In Colombia, the structure of the family is often defined by an absence. A study from the University of La Sabana suggests that eight out of ten children in the country are raised exclusively by their mothers. This social reality is not merely a demographic trend but something that the photographer calls a “recurring wound,” shaped by decades of internal armed conflict and systemic violence. In the border area of Norte de Santander, territorial disputes between guerrillas and paramilitaries have historically torn fathers from their homes through murder, forced recruitment, and displacement, leaving generations of women to sustain households in the midst of loss.
Ferley Ospina documents this “weight of absence” within his own family in the municipality of Los Patios. In 1999, Ospina’s father, who deserted the Colombian army to be present for his son’s childhood, was murdered by paramilitaries. This violence forced Ospina and his mother to flee their home, joining Colombia’s millions of internally displaced persons. By photographing the women in his extended family, Ospina examines the resilience required to “grow up incomplete” and the silent labor of grandmothers and aunts who provide the pivotal support network for unpartnered mothers.
Through domestic portraits and symbolic imagery, Ospina invokes the silence that follows violent loss. The project explores how the memory of the missing – fathers, sons, and brothers – continues to shape the identity and daily life of the survivors, providing a rare look into the domestic aftermath of an ongoing national crisis.
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