RÓNÀN LE FLOC’H




BACAB


Mayan civilization has evaporated keeping its mysteries. The veracity of his prophecies also remains ambiguous.

However, there had existed a work which fuels the assumptions: The Popol Wuh, the "Book of the Community" or even "Book of the Council". It is a sort of a mayan "Bible" whose content, dating back to the pre-Columbian era, relates the origin of the world and more particularly of the Quiché people, one of the many mayan ethnic communities, whose center of influence was located in the western part of present-day Guatemala.






Mayan traditions being surely transmitted orally, some researchers concluded that the writing of this book did not date from the pre-Columbian era but rather from 1554, that is to say about thirty years since the arrival of the Spaniards in Central America.How should we study something when we doubt its origins?

Only evidence and physical traces can justify its progress. And if it is impossible for me to write the last chapter, I have been able to testify to its current state of being.

This series of photographs explores the vestiges of a civilization which, without disappearing, continued to irradiate entire countries with its codes and knowledge.














































Do its heirs find their place in actual society?

Enclosed in the center of the American balance, the ancient Mayan territory is today open to all influences: the Pan-American highway is their main vein.

Here is a personnal inventory of the situation of people who, subject to the passage of time and the excesses of a globalized society, have managed to survive in the environment, however hostile, of their ancestors.There more than elsewhere, traditions and modernism face each other. The authenticity of what lends itself to be seen is then questionable.

Signs, symbols, forms and representations linked to the Mayan culture have never ceased to evolve, inspiring some to continue to perpetuate it. And sadly, despite the steady decline of native Central American populations, only signs and symbols persist.