Planimetry

Lantern

Noon: a lantern write with its language of shadows in the wall: it wants to compete with the young men of the night before.

***

I don’t see many news, I think there is an obsession with the bad ones and so few of the good ones, because there is goodness in the world too. I think in the people of Brussels and Istanbul.

I have chosen to don’t forget, as it happened to me when child, that there are also solidarity and support even in war; that always we will find a way to be happy, doesn’t matter what people, who needs help for his behaviour, try to do to dirt the heart, it’s just in our nature to pay with compassion to ourselves. That’s what we do in my years as children and we got to survive in a better world. I trust that is going to happen there in the far and dear Europe.

Mooney blue

If I would have to say why I love the moon

She is one and unique in the universe.

I love her when she is in the sky.

I miss her when she is not there.

I love her when she is full of light.

I love her when she is in shadow.

In a field of billions of stars

The sky is filled just by you.

***

Si tuviera que decir por qué amo la Luna

Sólo hay una como ella en el universo.

La amo cuando está en el cielo.

La extraño cuando no está ahí.

La amo cuando está plena de luz.

La amo cuando está en sombras.

En un campo de miriadas de estrellas

Mi cielo está ocupado sólo por ti a.n.c.z.

Shapes and shadows of Santa Catalina…

Come in, I’ll show you the bluest world possible

Weeks ago I had published some photographs in film about this monastery in a visit with my friend Melissa (they say this monastery is the biggest on the world, probably because it certainly is a small city)

I process my photographs to match what I see and what I feel, sometimes I’m driven by a certain color or meaning, shooting at the same time with film helped me to understand better the colors. I hope you enjoy the trip.

Built with blocks of blue sky

Some of the buildings have a blue so intense that even the sky with its intense blue of the desert can appear almost invisible.

Sometimes a heart of flowers can be harder to break than a chain of iron

I wonder if that heart is product of a sensible gardener, or just product of my imagination…

Head portrait

There is a trend to use HDR techniques in photographs; put it in a quite simple, and unfair because it can get nice and natural images, way it’s a technique to get the most of details in shadows and highlights. But I love deep shadows, and under the sun of the desert in Santa Catalina the shadows are almost solid, turning the architecture in a sort of old watch pointing the path of time in the slow procession of the shadows.

Feline eye

A city without windows

It’s a crowded place with tourists, as I was in that moment, but being a city covering a large area there are always moments of ancient silence, that language that the ashlars of volcanic origin whisper after the heat of the day.

The photographs were shot in July, in winter; the season in the desert means clean blue skies.

If the ashes could talk…

I love kitchens, they are the place where a home has the strongest amount of familiar memories, conversations, moments, true life.

A red color trying to cross the blue wall

The photograph lines below is a place I’ve taken before so it could be familiar to you. But what I can say, I like it a lot and certainly to me it would be a wonderful place to read or just simply rest to the warm of the afternoon.

Enjoy the light and take a sit

Volumes and shapes of Santa Catalina

Blue and white

And that’s all, in a certain way it’s a sort of street photography of a city whose life now endures in a little (although quite comfortable and modern) corner. Although that’s good, I think it was a sad destiny to be in such a beautiful place but not by choice but for the cruel rules of tradition. In colonial times rich families used to send one daughter to buy influence from church. Now fortunately seems that heaven doesn’t need money ;-)

Remembering a time when it had fire

Santa Catalina – An adventure in color

Another tale of another princess in hope of a green prince

The photographs of today were made with a film camera, a Samsung ECX-1, and a roll of Kodak Ektar 100. There aren’t skilled laboratories around me so I had to take a photograph of the negative and invert it in a special program, because if you just invert it simple turn to a bluish image. It take a lot of time and it’s my first processed roll, I hope you find one of your taste.

Taking a sunbath in the patio while talking about old times

These photographs were shot inside the cloisters of Santa Catalina de Siena Monastery, a colonial small city for the aristocracy. It’s said it’s the biggest of the word but I cannot find references to confirm that data.

Blue bliss in the light blessing the stair

Among the several rolls of film Ektar 100 is the most saturated so ideal for colorful compositions. Santa Catalina is a place of walls, mostly reds and blues. as a religious building I think it success in transmit an idea of peaceful meditation.

A carpet made with a shadow, a wall made with trees, a sky made with red and a space in blue

The little city, with its streets and plazas is a touristic attraction. The monastery still works but in a smaller corner. You know, there are no much demand to be nun these days. In colonial times people to get influence used to send their children to the church and the military, so it was mostly a monastery for the aristocracy.

a beautiful photographer in fields of a blue poem

And I saw this woman with red hair contrasting as a flower against the blue sky; so I felt in the urgency of take her portrait for, err, academic purposes. And this beautiful girl was for coincidence my friend Melissa! you can follow her chronicles in melissainthemiddle across the world in a way not so touristic and instead more experiential.

My respects (j/k)

I took the obligatory selfie but in a more original (I hope) way, a shoelfie! XD

Mystic red

The whole city is built with ashlars of volcanic rock, painted with special paintings with eggs in the colors and with ship skin as a brush.

And one day the mankind simply vanished…

Butlers of blue uniforms and white shoes

Say “O” with me

There is no more food. Please, somebody help me :/

Chiaroscuro of savage with red skin and green crown

Three caravels navigating a blue ocean

I shot two horizontal photographs to stitch this and get away of limitations of format.

The forbidden city of the red walls

And well, there were some more photos but this publication is already longer so see you another day ;-)

Abertura

Lights and shadows dancing; volumes and textures are born in every movement.

Lampa: The vermillion city of the blue windows

 

story of a murder

Lampa is an old city near my own city, in Lampa’s Province, in the heart of Puno’s region in Peru, at 3930 meters of altitude (12 893 ft.), it’s quite old but Spaniards re-founded it in 1678. This is called “The Pink City” or “The City of the Seven Wonders”… pink city for the color of the walls but to me they are more vermillion so I titled that way this article; it’s a small city so I don’t know which are those seven wonders, lol.

These photographs were took in 2007 with my first camera I was still one year away to end the university and I had the Hewlett Packard camera that my older brother gave me. So if you don’t tolerate noise I caution you to don’t continue if you care about your eyes XD

THE CITY

door to magician home

walking beyond the city surely we’ll find a heaven

caressing  your vermillion skin

to squeeze my nose

let’s go

waiting…

man with monocle

walls before the long night

It looks empty but that’s because the population works in Juliaca and sleep there, so today it’s more a bedroom city. When Spaniards founded it the population was white, but after the Tupac Amaru’s revolution whites left the city and went to the coast.

SANTIAGO APÓSTOL TEMPLE

let’s build a church made of colors

The church is a colonial building dedicated to Saint James, sadly the complete name is “Saint James the Indian Killer”, and Spanish descendants consider us as “Indians” Of course I couldn’t adore, reverence or respect a figure meant to kill us o.O!! But the building is nice.

a closed door

In fact I saw the facade analyzed by an Italian architect in a classic text at university, the arch unifying the diverse elements under it.

gentle light upon the old stones

fields of happy green

a last bit of light

unlimited spaces surrounding the building

There is a mystery, although I think it’s more a secret, about why the tower is so far from the main body of the temple. I guess for some structural reason, but that’s just a thought.

intimate garden

My road of infinite geometry

ART AND NATURE

European echoes

The city hall has a copy, supposedly the only one on the world, of the Pietà of Michelangelo. That day everything was closed so I photographed from the window. I’ve seen it before when I was a kid, I liked it so much.

falling into infinite lines beyond the light

I found this green beauty inside the city hall. I like the idea of infinite.

sleeping Venus

This is a Venus found near Lampa, it seems we occupied it from several thousands of years ago. Our society, the native side at least, is a patriarchal-matriarchal one.

Fight!

c’mon! you want to climb me :D

These trees are a native species that in Aymara we call “Qiñwa”, in Spanish it’s called “queñual” and in English you would call it Polylepis. I climbed them once, they’ve such a texture! :-)

END

And well, this was part of that afternoon. We, my parents and brothers, took a bus to come back to Juliaca city.

a sky so close to us

Point of intensity

Under the roofs of a bright desert sun the fresh relieve of a shadow.

chomp, chomp!

 

Days ago a kind lady whose Sunday reports really rocks said me that she would like to see more of the blue sky in the photo of a gargoyle. So I thought it would be nice to put another one that I took that day ;-)

The vengeance of the gargoyle and its blowgun