This series by Colombian photographer Andres Millan entitled My home is my castle was initiated two months after the earthquake that shook Mexico in September 2017, in Juchitan, Oaxaca, one of the most affected areas. Andres Millan focuses on the idea of the house, a structural part of the family and its notion of “home” after a disaster. In his pictures, one can see people who ended up being migrants in their own city, in their own territory. The portraits of families and single people were made at the places where these people lived before the event. Andres Millan also staged portraits of kids with “piñatas”, representing their idea of a “home” by hooking the object at the exact place where their real house used to be. The photographer also used a particular process making all images illuminated with blue and red light, and shooting only one image a day, at midnight, the exact time of the earthquake that hit Juchitan, Oaxaca. “The color and darkness are used as a reference to the first image I saw from Colombia when the first earthquake occurred,” he says. “It was midnight, the light had gone, and the only thing that illuminated the live transmission were cell phone lights and the light of a police car. It is also about a state of emergency. All photos were taken at the exact time of the earthquake so I chose to make only one a day.” Today, Andres Millan wants his photographic project to be used to bring opportunities for the six families who lost everything and need help to rebuild their houses.
Andres Millan is a Colombian photographer member of the Cargo Collective.
