From June 5 to 25, the “Cuentos Chinos” photography exhibition by Guillermo Urrutia, a graduate of the Bachelor’s program in Graphic Design, was held in the Central Hall of ORT Centro. As part of the event, on June 23, Mr. Urrutia led an informal gathering in the ORT Centro Auditorium where he exchanged views on the exhibition, photography, and travel in general.
“Cuentos Chinos” is a very personal account of a slice of life in the East, told through thirty images accompanied by a brief description of the scene or setting and the feeling experienced at the moment each photograph was taken. Tradition, work, religion, and consumerism intertwine with a touch of humor to capture, in a highly subjective way, the daily lives of the inhabitants of an overpopulated country undergoing constant transformation, growth, and opening up to the West.
Surprise lies in the most everyday situations and makes one rethink the world at every turn, ultimately confirming the suspicion that there is only one race—the human race—which suffers and loves, cries and laughs in an ancestral struggle to fulfill the same dreams.
Cuentos Chinos is a tool for sharing a privileged journey to the other side of the world, traveling together once again from Montevideo. It is a crossroads of identities between the inhabitants of a rural China with medieval traits, the Westernized consumers of the big cities, and a photographer in awe on a journey of discovery, who never ceases to be surprised between one click and the next.