See into the light
I am thinking about street photography. I understand about life in cities and people is important to have a reference of scale so when the composition ask it I introduce people in public spaces in the photograph. For example in this first photograph… Could you have a sense of the size of the door without the couple?
Caress of afternoon light
In Peru, Chile and Bolivia there is no problem in shooting in the public space of the street. It’s the space for everybody so the same way I take photographs of others I discovered others shot photographs of me. I never could forbid nobody in the street to have photographs about me, the same way I couldn’t forbid nobody to shot the façade of the buildings I designed because I designed them precisely as a contribution to the public and shared space of the city. Of course there are limits and I try that the person is not totally clear, because I’m not focused in persons but the happenings of the city.
In search of the unknown
The life in the highlands, the coast and the jungle is quite different. Usually population in touristic cities are used to photographs, commercial cities instead are the less welcome to photographs. In any case I can say that in Peru, Bolivia and Chile is allowed to take photographs in any public space.
Doves
But I understand it’s not a universal way to see things. I know in continental Europe and in Quebec laws forbid photography of people, even in public space. If I would visit those places certainly I would respect the law and save my camera, but I don’t understand why the citizens of those countries have not the same problem when they visit my country and are happy to shot, as it’s nothing wrong really, every person, especially the ones with more typical costumes. Also I see their albums and they are proud to shot people in Japan or India…
contemplating
So this is my thought. In my way to think, to feel, to express, (and according to the law of the countries I have visited and the one where I live) I know I’m doing well. I considered to delete, modify or don’t post street photography for the readers of the sensible countries but this is not a magazine. This is a personal diary, and I need to be faithful and true to myself.
I hope you can appreciate in my photographs and words how is a world different to yours, in the same way I learn from the yours. But if it’s against what your heart and mind consider correct and you are not going to change your mind then my best suggestion is to leave my space, as always honored for your time towards what I write and show. Nothing more.
Color in the white world
If there is an idea I try to express is my feeling that in cities we tend to be actually alone. The crowds and the cities make us living around several interactions, but in the end they reinforce our will to be ourselves. Certainly cities reinforce that will on me. In the highlands I try to live close to hills or mountains, in the coast close to the sea…
Mural painted with reflections
There is an almost funny feeling of solitude contrasting with the idea that we walk regularly with the same people in the way to work or studies. What is more accentuated in this time where we cannot get a word with the passenger next to us without being seen as perverts but we wake up passions with the stranger that we “knew” in internet. But although sometimes it’s real mostly that’s an illusion: here we are just chains of letters. The person next to you in the street is more real.
About shadows and thoughts
When I take these photographs I think in Hopper’s oeuvre. The reflexive loneliness of the persons. They way they never get to make eye contact closing their souls around themselves.
We sell colors
In Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino I also feel that strange life that is the life in the city. A carnival where people of every kind is mixed and the traditions and routines make us forget that perhaps some of the things we do aren’t healthy or logical. For example one of the reasons I don’t see my University former mates is because the meetings have to be done drinking several bottles of beer… but it’s the life in cities.
Is it truth?
And I like to think in cities as living animals, giant and living according to their own rhythm. Indifferent to the little and ephemeral people moving around their bodies.
Time to go.
nice day for a walk
Qhapaq 