Seconded By: Vladimir Karamazov
When Isadora Romero found out that her great-grandmother and grandfather were seed guardians, she wondered if the need to tell stories about agrobiodiversity was in her blood. Over the last 20 years, 75% of seed varieties have been lost worldwide. Romero’s visual research engages with how the loss of ancestral memory and Indigenous knowledge ‒ resulting from colonization, forced displacement, and racism ‒ is causing seeds to disappear at an alarming rate.
Moving across multiple geographies in Latin America, Romero examines this crisis with breadth and precision. In Paraguay, she observes how women collectivize to counter agribusiness that limits produce for local consumption, and the inequitable land distribution that such businesses benefit from. In Mexico, she looks at the cultural significance of food and how the preservation of domesticated plants can be shaped by their relationship to the human species. In Ecuador, she attempts to understand the dual approaches towards conservation ‒ the Indigenous and the conventionally scientific ‒ acknowledging the investment of both communities in similar goals, but also the lack of dialogue between them. Her own family’s history in Colombia, and their contribution to the preservation of the potato seed, becomes the catalyst and culmination of the ethos of the project.
The excerpted chapters in this selection offer an alternate way of looking at environmental issues ‒ through the prism of possibility, instead of catastrophic consequence. Each one privileges a resistance: be it from women organizing against monoculture or from people for whom inherited knowledge systems are guiding forces. In looking towards the past, and to those that continue to relate to land, Fume, Root, Seed recalibrates the approach we adopt towards conversations around conservation.
Tanvi Mishra (Researcher and curator)
Whoever controls the seeds holds the most powerful weapon in their hands, says Vandana Shiva.
Samuel Bautista holds an ear of corn in his milpa in Teotitlán del Valle, Oaxaca, Mexico.
Germoplasm bank
Marcela Quintana, university researcher writing her thesis on cedar at the National Department of Plant Genetic Diversity Resources (Departamento Nacional de Recursos Fitogenéticos, DENAREF). Quito, Ecuador
Kuya Raymi
People from the community of Camuendo Chico, come down after the celebration of the Kuya Raymi ritual, at the feet of Taita Imbabura, in front of Lake San Pablo-Ecuador .
Fume
Mama Josefina Lema leading a ritual for Kuya Raymi and Tarapuy Pacharaymi, ancestral festivities that celebrate Mother Earth at the beginning of the fertile season. These ceremonies mark the beginning of the agricultural cycle and pay tribute to femininity. In Camuendo Chico, Imbabura, Ecuador. Josefina is a seed keeper and medicine woman. She uses a variety of seeds to prepare treatments for her patients.
Eye
Reflection of the sun in the water stagnation in a ceremonial stone that was presumably used to grind corn by the first inhabitants of the territory known today as teotitlañn del Valle in Oaxaca Mexico.
The whole process of seeding, harvesting, preparation and consumption of food is often linked to spiritual connections with the territory. Perhaps there are stone gods that observe everything.
Red soil
The Paraguayan territory is one of the most rapidly deforested in Latin America. With the heat and the direct sun, soon the earth becomes arid and dry and the species with it also disappear.
Ñanina
Saturnina Almada (Ñanina) is one of the primary seed keepers in Edelira, Paraguay. She inherited from her mother the ability to collect, plant, and tag native and traditional seeds.
Floating potatoes
Ana Isabel Guevara tosses potatoes that will be used for planting. in Une, Cundinamarca, Colombia
Oliverio remembers
Oliverio Romero rests on top of the only potato variety still planted in his hometown. Une, Cundinamarca, Colombia.
seeds are the people
Double exposure of a family archive photo featuring grandfather Oliverio Romero Rojas and the extended family among potato seeds. Une, Cundinamarca, Colombia