Juan Baraja
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Florida Ave.
This is the first project undertaken by Juan Baraja in the United States. By recording the distinguishing traits of the central thoroughfare in Washington, D.C., he reflects the city’s identity via its main avenue. Along the lines of a synecdoche, this project displays all the heterogeneity and effervescence of an entire country without straying from Florida Avenue (barely three miles long).
These images reflect the ceaseless metamorphosis of the urban fabric and the Cartesian regularity of the layout of the American capital, as well as the identity of the people who bring it to life. The various portraits play an important role in the project, bearing witness to a living metropolis. Juan Baraja approaches the subjects who inhabit Washington, D.C. with the same pristine gaze he casts on its buildings and monuments, its shopkeepers behind their stalls in Union Market, young people embarking on a night of partying at the southeastern limits, and couples looking after their cozy homes in the avenue ’s residential section.
Florida Avenue stands as a visual story in which Juan Baraja shares his personal view of the American capital through the prism of photographic narrative.