Disculpe

On the city busses of Medellín and Bogotá, the “vendedores ambulantes“ practice something that may be described as “the quest for what makes a life“. What this boils down is making money with whatever is available: chocolate bars, ballpoint pens, music or stories. The German-Colombian artist Jan Lotter Benavides has collected 65 such scenes in his small-format book. Titled DISCULPE, it revolves around his transcripts of recordings he made secretly while in Colombia on a travel scholarship from Hessische Kulturstiftung. Some of the stories told are subtly hilarious, some are deeply tragic, but they all share a great sense of dignity. And this is the book's great quality: we step onto the bus from the street, and we take part.