Discarded image

I don't know why I discarded this photograph so that it would not be part of Fordlandia. The cockatoo is not free, but it is close to an image in which it can recognise its habitat. Maybe that's why it made me so uncomfortable. It was as if the bird knew something that I could not name: the jungle was there, just a few-odd inches away, but it was still inaccessible.

The cordon that held it back was barely visible, a tense line that crossed the frame and broke the illusion. There was a mixture of resignation and alertness in her gaze, as if she had learned to live between the edges of the imposed world and the memory of freedom. And then I thought that maybe Fordlandia was just that: an attempt to remake a place to the measure of a dream, without understanding that dreams don't cage.

I looked at the photograph again. The cockatoo wasn't screaming or trying to run away; it just stood there, motionless, almost fused with the landscape of the painting. I understood that there was something deeply uncomfortable in that stillness: the simulacrum of paradise could be crueler than the cage itself.