PHOTOGRAPHER AND EDITORIAL MANAGER

Photographing Machu Picchu in April 2011, on the 100th anniversary of the rediscovery of the Inca citadel by Hiram Bingham, required establishing a point of view and a common thread within the framework of its symbolism in contemporary Peru.

Consequently, Peru’s historic timeline was revised, focusing on the most relevant historical processes from the Inca Empire to the Republic, then correlated to Machu Picchu in today’s society. Some concepts emerged from this juxtaposition: miscommunication, icon, fragmentations, pride, and identity.

Finding a photographic sense, a way of portraying Machu Picchu, in accordance with the questions that these ideas raised, became an imperative throughout the fieldwork. Through photography, walls, rock and its joints create diverse and contradictory meanings: together they represent the quintessence of Inca architecture and national pride, while, at the same time, they reflect Peruvian society’s fragmentation.

Decontextualizing the walls in each photographic frame, seeking harmony or grouping individual photos in triptychs to obtain new rhythms and balanced compositions, manifests itself as a dichotomy: on one hand, the need to represent the icon and pride of Peruvian identity and, on the other hand, the trend toward escape, elusiveness or the lack of communication that represents us and all that we do not want to see.

Machu Picchu today is inalienable. It is, undoubtedly, a vital presence: it begins as part of a civilizatory human experience and it does not go away. It is a national symbol for Peruvians, a symbol of transversal sacredness for all, it simultaneously separates us and unites us within its joints.