An aperture in middle of the city of bricks. Makes me think in the words of Emperor Augustus… “I found a Rome of bricks; I leave to you one of marble”.
city
Toothless smile
A morning in the capital of Bolivia. I wonder how many people know this city, to me it is quite famous but it seems more people know more about the Mexican city of the same name, I unknown everything about it except its name.
This hole… this empty space among several ages, the Republican building, the modern one, the (probably) colonial and in the background the poor blocks in the hills, from the window of the hotel seemed a kind of messy smile in the morning. It was cold so I went back to bed, hehe now you know why there aren’t so many sunrises here xD.
A morning sunbath
These balconies are oriented to the East, so they receive sun in the morning. This place makes me think would make a nice painting with a theme similar to the ones so cherished by Hopper. I admire him so much… perhaps I was drew to this place precisely because made me evoke his art…
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Estos balcones está orientados hacia el este, de tal manera que reciben sol por las mañanas. Este lugar me hace pensar que sería una pintura agradable con un tema similar a los que era tan afecto Hopper. Lo admiro tanto… tal vez me sentí atraído a este lugar precisamente porque me hizo evocar su arte…
Several lifes at the same time
Time contains so many stories parallels crossing and sometimes blending at diffent paces and differents roads… but in the end every one of them converge to the same final.
El tiempo contiene tantas historias paralelas cruzando y a veces mezclándose a diferentes ritmos y por diferentes caminos… pero igual todas terminan en el mismo final.
Seed of a new city
There is a place outside Arequipa city where a new city, probably for farmers, is growing. It’s a slowly being bigger and ordered; it is in the desert and in the afternoon a big shadow covers it. The mountain far away in the center is the volcano Misti.
I think in it as a baby city, getting bigger with the time… I use to wonder every time I travel if in few time it’s going to have cars, skyscrapers, planes, crowds and the noise of big cities and if I would say I knew it when it was a baby city.
The sun in your eyes
The moment when the city gets a blush in their windows. A distant echo of the sunset.
Some thoughts about street photography
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
Cyclope
The horizontal windows of the brick building, make me think in the comic character Cyclops, from X-Men… it’s in the houses in the neighborhood in Juliaca. We live near the Apu (sacred hill) Huaynarroque.
This was shot with a Fujifilm X-E1 and a Fujinon XF 35mm 1.4R I bought to my younger brother, he like so much velvia colors so I thought it would be a nice camera for him, but (he is in Buenos Aires) told me that he didn’t use so much the camera and today I knew that his camera was stolen with other things in the car of a friend of him… I feel grateful that it was just stolen and he wasn’t there to be harmed or attacked. When kid I used to feel afraid to receive things because I usually ended breaking them and consequently there was a rain of words of disappointment, of course I believe in take care of things, my camera, cell phone, and laptop are enduring years because I’m careful, but I don’t believe that things should be more important than ourselves, if we miss a tool then we have to get another, learn from the experience and move on. For that reason I don’t care about that camera, and I’m more interested about my brother and his safety, perhaps unconsciously he didn’t want the camera so I’m going to search another better for him.
I think is a nice moment to post a review of that camera ;-)
Morning blues
I’ve seen this view of Juliaca after the sunrise thousands of times… I used to wake up and before to go to school verify if the deposit was filled with water for the day (the public water distribution covers just a few hours) but in those days I didn’t have a camera with me, not even a cellphone because they were so big, freaking expensive and even worse they used to be just for calls XD and I had a plastic film camera but I had needed to buy rolls with money I didn’t have.
Oh, I converted the post in an almost a rant xP! fortunately now I can shot the sunrises when I (try to) wake up and even better now there is no school \o/ !!
Verticals and horizontals
A city of things, each one with its own story told in its texture and shape. Waiting for the time when we fall asleep to come alive as in a Disney movie, singing to dance songs releasing in their lyrics the infinite number of rumors with which the neighbors fill them in the day.
Qhapaq 