Me Venden (They Sell Me)

© Jully - Image from the Me Venden (They Sell Me) photography project © Jully - Image from the Me Venden (They Sell Me) photography project © Jully - Image from the Me Venden (They Sell Me) photography project View all images ↓
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  • Dates
    2025 - Ongoing
  • Author
  • Location Colombia
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In Sibundoy Valley, the Putumayo River faces threats from mining and stone extraction. This project portrays those defending the river and Kamëntsá women preserving ancestral knowledge, revealing the links between water, memory, territory, and resistance.

Me Venden (They Sell Me) gives a voice to the Putumayo River, an ecological artery born in the Sibundoy Valley at the crossroads of the Andes and the Amazon. While its source is traditionally sustained by the ancestral knowledge of the Kamëntsá people, the river is increasingly commodified and destroyed as it flows downstream. Since 2022, legal and illegal mining and stone extraction have violently altered its course, threatening biodiversity and causing severe depletion in the lowlands. This photographic series serves as both a visual eulogy and a testament to resistance, mapping a sacred ecosystem transformed into an endangered commodity.

Colombia remains one of the most dangerous countries for environmental defenders; hundreds of indigenous and community leaders have been murdered since the signing of the Peace Agreement. Because these conflicts arise from large-scale extractive forces, the identities of the frontliners in this project must remain protected and anonymous.

To honor their stewardship and disrupt the traditional, extractive gaze of documentary photography, this project portrays Kamëntsá women who have served as guardians of their territory for generations. It also integrates a collaborative community photo lab. The temporary transition into black-and-white imagery within the sequence marks a shift in agency and authorship, seamlessly blending external documentation with internal community self-representation.

Within this 14-image sequence, two photographs are authored directly by the indigenous Kamëntsá women participants, shifting agency entirely to the community to document their territory on their own terms. Through their knowledge, practices, and shared visual resistance, these women preserve ancestral ecological wisdom. Me Venden reveals the vital role of community-led environmental protection, capturing the enduring connection between collective memory, shared authorship, and the urgent defense of territory before the river disappears entirely.

© Jully - Image from the Me Venden (They Sell Me) photography project
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The source of the Putumayo River lies high in the mountains at El Portachuelo, a páramo ecosystem and nature reserve located in the upper reaches of San Francisco.

© Jully - Image from the Me Venden (They Sell Me) photography project
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For millennia, Kamëntsá women have been guardians of their people’s ancestral knowledge, preserving the wisdom of medicinal and protective plants. In this photograph, Milena holds a capa de monte, a plant that grows high in the mountains and is traditionally used for protection against the rain. Today, this plant, like many others, is becoming increasingly scarce.

© Jully - Image from the Me Venden (They Sell Me) photography project
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“Danger: Do not enter. You are entering a designated mining area.” This ‘official’ warning informed the community that access to the river was no longer permitted. It also marked the beginning of a surveillance campaign targeting anyone who attempted to pass. In Colombia, rivers and beaches cannot legally be privatised. And yet, in practice, that is precisely what happens.

© Jully - Image from the Me Venden (They Sell Me) photography project
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Here, on the highland plateau where the river flows and the stones hold their stories, machinery now removes and extracts them for sale to a major road infrastructure project intended to “connect” the Amazon with the Andes.

© Jully - Image from the Me Venden (They Sell Me) photography project
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At the same time, the river’s natural bends are being cut off, forcing its course into a straight line. This alteration is contributing to flooding across the flatlands. As the river descends with considerable force from its source high in the mountains, its natural meanders would normally help slow its flow. By straightening its course, this natural regulation is disrupted.

© Jully - Image from the Me Venden (They Sell Me) photography project
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S.O.S. Written by a group of organised young people on what should be the riverbed, this message is a desperate call to protect a river that, day by day, is becoming less and less a river.

© Jully - Image from the Me Venden (They Sell Me) photography project
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Con las botas bien puestas — A Colombian expression embodying determination, courage, and unwavering commitment to taking action and defending what matters.

© Jully - Image from the Me Venden (They Sell Me) photography project
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Growing up alongside a river offers the privilege of knowing it intimately: the plants that grow along its banks, many of which continue to be used to treat illnesses today, and the shape and force of its waters before human intervention altered its course. This river defender walks its length every day, carrying an intimate mental map shaped by years of observation, experience, and care.

© Jully - Image from the Me Venden (They Sell Me) photography project
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Mary and Rosa are Kamëntsá women who preserve ancestral farming knowledge in the Sibundoy Valley. Amid expanding monocultures, they cultivate in harmony with nature, caring for plants and soil. Their work sustains local ecosystems and reveals how agricultural practices, plant diversity, and the health of the land are inseparable from the river’s future.

© Jully - Rosa and Miryam during the community photography laboratory, holding the cameras used to document their own territory.
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Rosa and Miryam during the community photography laboratory, holding the cameras used to document their own territory.

© Jully - Image from the Me Venden (They Sell Me) photography project
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Community Lab Photo 1: 
Photograph authored directly by Rosa, an indigenous Kamëntsá woman participant during a community photography laboratory, reclaiming visual agency to document her own ancestral territory.

© Jully - Image from the Me Venden (They Sell Me) photography project
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Community Lab Photo 2:
 Photograph created by Miryam, an indigenous Kamëntsá woman during the collaborative workshop, centering the community's own perspective on their changing environment.

© Jully - Image from the Me Venden (They Sell Me) photography project
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Tumaqueño, an endogenous plant captures and holds water, a symbol of food sovereignty and ancestral botanical knowledge vital to surviving the climate crisis.

© Jully - Image from the Me Venden (They Sell Me) photography project
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Where the river should flow, silence remains. The exposed riverbed holds the memory of water and bears witness to a landscape in transformation. A river is never only water; it is an ecosystem, a source of life, and a thread connecting the land, its people, and their ancestral knowledge. When its flow is disrupted, what else do we stand to lose?