Colombia: François Bucher

François Bucher (Colombia) follows the explorations of Daniel Ruzo on the Markawasi plateau in Peru. In the fifties, Ruzo, a Peruvian cryptologist and anthropologist, discovered an ancient park of stone monuments on this Andean plateau. The huge blocks of natural rock sculpted in a distinctive technique display their anthropomorphic, zoomorphic and mythological shapes only when the rays of the sun shine on them at specific times and seasons of the year. Bucher recorded the account of custodian Severiano Olivares during a visit to the plateau. Olivares pointed to each of the sculptures in the park and described the figure it represents, the point from which it should be viewed and at what time of day and year, as well as who discovered it and the date of the finding. Most of the shapes were discovered by Ruzo and Olivares’s father, who was Ruzo’s assistant. In his book, The Fantastic History of a Discovery: The Stone Temples of a Vanished People, published in 1974, Ruzo censured the mainstream scientists of his time, who were more interested in the trip to the Moon than in understanding the history of humanity. Bucher returns to Ruzo’s paths and hills and uses his work, The Second and a Half Dimension - An Expedition to the Photographic Plateau, to guide us in an exercise of perception that takes place between the observer, the rock, the Sun and the Earth’s axis, revealing the photographic aspect of the experience – as an impression of light – and the convergence of man, the world and the cosmos.