Landscapist / Discuss

marek.wykowski    says:

Carlos Jiménez Cahua was born in Lima, Peru and has studied Visual Arts at Princeton University. He returned to Lima to photograph the pueblos jóvenes - shanty towns constructed around large cities in Peru. In the statement to his "Lima" project, Carlos writes:

"Whereas the people of developed nations affect the form and therefore identity of the land, the people of Lima quite literally merely scratch the surface—their relationship to the ground is not one of dominance, but of acquiescence."

Carlos was so kind to give us some insight into his work and answer a couple of questions.

Carlos, the aesthetics of your photographs remind me much of Karin Apollonia Müller work, while the combat between the land and inhabitants omnipresent in your "Lima" series makes me think of The New West from Robert Adams. In the light of these two distinct styles - how would you comment on the role of atmosphere created by images in a documentary series?

CJC: My images of Peru were made during their winter. In Lima, in this season, the city is overcast nearly the entire time. In the three months I spent there making images, there were only a few days in which I saw the sun, and only briefly at that. At the same time, Lima is literally desert, getting less than an inch of rainfall a year; it's just a delicate, nightly mist that coats the city with moisture, though not enough to support (much) vegetation.

The incessantly grey sky and dull color of the earth made an atmosphere to which I was highly attracted; really, the atmospherics was one of the primary reasons I went to Lima to make images. In general, the color palettes I tend to work with in my images are quite subdued, that is, not very saturated. This is also evident in my earlier work, a series I did on construction sites.


I've never been to Peru, but if I open any NatGeo I will most probably be exposed to Machu Picchu or a shepherd in poncho with a herd of lamas. Your pictures show a different world. I would like to know how your work is perceived in Peru, what comments do you receive, how people react to it?

CJC: People's visual preconceptions of Peru and perhaps even Lima often come from these popular images of the highlands (e.g., Cuzco) as you describe. In researching images made in Lima and Peru before and after I made my own, I constantly ran into these type of images and often only these images. (Even Peru's most famous photographer, Martin Chambi, made such images, though to him, this was his homeland)

Lima is a metropolis, holding about a third of the entire population of Peru, and the images I made there are of the districts outside the city's center, mostly to the south, but still Lima proper.

The only reaction of other Peruvians to my work of Peru that I can tell you of is that of my family, those both living here (in the US) and in Peru, all of whom are from Lima. There's the general spectrum of reactions from disinterest to praise from individual to individual, but often, there was surprise that I was photographing the places I was, middle class to poor neighborhoods. They wondered why I went to these places and not to the 'beautiful' fountains, boulevards, colonial churches, etc. as found in the city center (and often photographed), as indeed exist in Lima, having been founded by European colonists.

I think part of this surprise on their part has to do with people's general associations with photography, that pictures show them the picturesque, that which is, by general consensus, attractive. However, I felt their surprise may have stemmed from their qualms related me highlighting parts of Lima that are, socioculturally, unattractive. Even the poorest Peruvians are quite nationalistic, proud of their country, but I'm showing people parts of Peru to which there's not much pride attached. The pueblos jovenes, wherein much of my work was made, are not erected out of civil success but basic necessity, a last resort, revealing the failings of Peru, thereby perhaps challenging Peruvians' nationalism.


You had started a career in science but then decided to move to photography. Among the Landscapist members there is probably quite a few people who at least once thought of this move. Could you tell us about your process of coming to the decision to stop your scientific career and devote yourself to photography.

CJC: Since I was just a kid, I was always interested in science. In high school, I decided I would focus on Chemistry, and I followed through with college. It was just at the very end of my undergraduate studies that I finally figured out I really didn't want to continue with a career in Chemistry. That said, I've not fallen out of grace with Chemistry or science. I'm still intrigued by its elegance and rigor and try to keep in touch with it the best I can.

Before I came to this decision, I started making and studying art. My discontinuation with science wasn't really related to art; that is, it's not that I left Chemistry to make art. (In fact I studied both concurrently and completed a thesis in each at the end of my undergrad studies.) It's just that when I decided to not continue with Chemistry, there was art. Needless to say, I'm quite intrigued by art. Though, it's too early to be conclusive about my decisions and, much less, my future.

Thanks a lot!
















Posted at 1:38AM, 16 July 2009 PDT (permalink)