Frontier between two worlds

Which side would you choose?

Seeing a free horse

 

I would loved to be a cowboy… as I watched some series when kid. In newspapers they are always asking cowboys… but in Peru a cowboy is not a guy that goes from town to town with adventures, but a guy that works in a farm. Truly an exciting life but not the same as in the movies. :D

Closed

Lights and shadows.

A yellow bye

Have you ever played with the white balance of your camera? Usually is modified to get accurate colors (cloudy, sunny, shade, tungsten, etcetera) but you can alter the way your camera sees the reality.

In this case I made the white balance cooooold xD so this sunset with reds and oranges skies would be a yolk yellow yummy color surrounded by blues ^^

So if there is a lesson today is that you can have fun and paint with your camera :P

A welcome shadow

Midday in Ilo city. Usually is recommended by photographers that midday is not a good hour to take photographs because the harsh light. I don’t see why not, the world is still nice at that hour…

Borders

A world of lines and textures. Without meaning like scars in skin.

Un mundo de líneas y texturas. Sin significado como marcas en la piel.

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

White wall

Felipillo

Felipillo means “lil’ Philip” Spaniards used in the beginning of their fanatic invasion those derogatory names instead our names, so they would say Juanillo (lil’ John) et al with their servants.

Felipillo is important because he was the first servant of the foreign invaders. A handy translator that they used to get in prison to the Inca and, afraid of a militar answer of our generals, lastly killing the Inca with ridiculous charges of idolatry (they had their gods, we had our beliefs) and polygamy (in Bible there are a lot of characters with several wives and Spaniards cared to do the same here); that was possible with the help of Felipillo that was also greedy and wanted one of the ñustas (princess) for him and perhaps felt that he would win a lot being a servant.

He didn’t win nothing. His name in Peru is now the term used for traitor. Pizarro, Hernandez and Almagro in Spain are heroes (and it’s right because they made heroic feats to the glory of Spain) but in Peru they are the worst according to our culture, thieves; the Spaniards that came from Spain are in Europe conquerors, in Peru they are invaders. But Felipillo appeared in a moment when to the laws of Spain we were even doubted to be human beings so I understand he’s not a hero, he’s nothing in their history, but in our history he appears like the maximum traitor.

Felipillo proves that the human nature is universal, in everybody there is the power to do anything, we weren’t a civilization of saints and Spaniards weren’t a civilization of bad people. I understand the most of them came from a background of poverty and despair, several of us were also greedy and allied to them; the invaders after a time would be punished by their king and would die in internal wars, the gold and silver that they stolen from us in the end would origin inflation in Spain and the consequent poverty, so the meeting would bring bad and good things for both sides. In my opinion the best they brought was the idea of pardon.

After my travels across my country I’m afraid that we are now a country of Felipillos, we betray our world, instead of making it evolve, we choose to sell us for a few coins from foreigners. Nothing is created or produced but imported. It’s like a kind of lack of self-steem. Walking the streets is a shock because no one of the cars was designed or even manufactured in the country, we are a dead country without soul. That’s the difference between a developed country from a modern one: the modern country can have machines, electronics or arts, but it depends of the production and thought outside said country, if the producers would negate to sell we simple would be recycling the cars until they break; instead a developed country has the capacity to design a car, and if it wants to manufacture it.

What makes it funnier is that foreigners come to my country to experience our culture in the belief that we are still authentic. They came and what they find is schools of yoga and Hindu philosophy…

Kicking the tree

Enough of the hate against trees, lel.

By the way, we (Peru) have the national flag with the same design as the one of Canada: red/white/red. Law requires us to raise the flag every independence day; I guess I need to buy another one for the next year, the one I use is so old that I’m afraid if I attempt to wash it I’m going to end with a pink flag.

ESTOS