Photo Essay: Trespassing in Bogota

Homes

By Rachel Turney

Covid was a strange time in all of our lives and stranger still if you were an outsider somewhere. In 2021, I was in Bogota, which is a beautiful city, and as you can see from these photographs there are mixed feelings about tourism and foreign people living there. The photograph that best fits this theme of trespassing is, of course, “No Trespassing”. But, aren’t we all trespassing everywhere we go? We collide and intersect with the lives of others at every point. The best thing we can do is to trespass kindly and quietly as we move through life, disturbing and disrupting as little as possible while honoring our lives and our journeys. I am reminded of the signs on the Tokyo metro that have been translated to say “Do not inconvenience others”. While we are all trespassing as travelers exploring the elsewhere, that doesn’t mean we can’t trespass with care.

Rachel Turney is an educator and teacher trainer. Her poems and prose are published (or are in press) in The Font Journal, Nap Lit, Ranger, Through Lines Magazine, Bare Back, Cafe Lit, and Teach Write Journal. Her photography appears in The Salt, San Antonio Review, Umbrella Factory Magazine, and Ink in Thirds Magazine. Blog: turneytalks.wordpress.com Instagram: @turneytalks