La Boquilla is a palenque just north of Cartagena, Colombia where more than 10,000 people live in an area of 2.7 square kilometers. Most of the residents are Afro-Colombian, and many of them came to La Boquilla because they were displaced from towns in Colombia's interior due to the country's ongoing civil war. In 2005, Lorena Turner and Roger Triana developed a camera distribution project as a way of giving voice to the residents of La Boquilla.
La Boquilla is a longitudinal study of the eponomously named community, every five years Turner and Triana return to work with the seven residents of La Boquilla whom they met in 2005. Each is given a simple single-use camera and asked to photograph their families, neighborhood and community in order to provide a firsthand account of the conditions, lives and values of their community.
La Boquilla is the first project to look at Afro-Colombian culture on Colombia's Atlantic coast. A traveling exhibit has been developed which include images created by the participants, as well as portraits taken of the participants by Roger Triana, a Colombian photojournalist, and an essay written by Dr. Peter Wade, a Social Anthropologist at the University of Manchester in England. It has been exhibited throughout Colombia and the United States.
El Tiempo,La Boquilla se retrata a sí misma
Red Afro, Ojo a la Boquilla