Juan Arias

In the series of photographs entitled Pancoger, Colombian photographer Juan Arias captures a series of banana plants in different urban contexts: a sidewalk, the gardens of houses and buildings in the city, and urban landscaping. By capturing the persistence of this plant in unexpected places or where it does not “belong,” Arias points to the widespread presence of a central element in Latin American and Caribbean rural life. However, the banana plant, like people, has moved from the countryside to the city. The title of the series, Pancoger—playing with the words “pan” (bread) and “coger” (harvest)—refers to the idea that the bananas produced by the plant are food ready to be eaten by whoever needs it, whether in the countryside or the city.