Book of my Peru images.

I just made this epic tome of my images from Peru.  I built it as a book dummy and portfolio piece.  Its about 160 pages and is being printed on high quality, Ilford Pearl Lustre paper with archival end pages, an oatmeal colored linen cover with this cool, wrap around cover sheet.  You can view it here and even order one though its damn expensive.  My concept for the book was to show different vignettes and photo stories from my 9 months of travel in Peru in 2009 and have fun, colorful chapter breaks with grids of various cultural items.  Some examples below.

Amish do Philip Glass

We needed a  “Get the Hell out of NYC” trip the other day so we headed to Amish country for an overnight and, praise be the lord,  stumbled upon an antique auction.  These events are an amazing dose of Americana..the people, the stuff, the sounds.  And if you are a junker like me, its the holy grail.  I scored a beautifully distressed framed photo of a farmhouse from 1920 for $6, a braided rug for $9 and Fiorella bought a guitar from 1965 for $40.  The auctioneer had an amazing “call” and I found its repetition to be very rhythmic and musical.  Is this where Philip Glass got his musical inspirations from? Was he listening to auctions on the radio as he drove his cab in the 70′s while composing “Einstein on the Beach”?

I took a couple videos of a woman next to us knitting a blanket and loved the juxtaposition of the slowness of her work and project and the hyper-active call of the auction.

and another variation:

And here is a video of Fiorella buying a guitar.  Note her trying to outbid herself at the end..so cute.

Blessing of the Car ceremony in the Southern Andes.

Proud owner of a newly blessed car.

In my last trip to Peru I stumbled upon a ceremony where people came to have their vehicles blessed by a priest in the parking lot of a 200 year old church.  The priest from the church was going car to car and showering cars, people, engines, tires and grandmas alike with holy water as well as blessings to ensure the people safe travel.  The church, located up a mountain from San Salvador in a tiny enclave named Huanca, hosts the ceremony every year and the 200 or so people had driven from all around Southern Peru.

 

The 200 year old church which hosts the ceremony is an hour East of Cusco, the city in the South of Peru that one goes to before venturing on to Machu Picchu.

Elder Andean women celebrating the ceremony by passing cups of beer.

Firecrackers were ubiquitous in the church parking lot.

The priest of the church bestowed blessings and holy water on the cars, its parts in entirety (engine, interior, tires, etc..) and as well as all of the family members.

In a side building off of the parking lot where candles are lite for prayers or in memorium.  (Note the car icons formed in wax in the lower center.)

A couple with their blessed car.

The priest blesses the photographer.

Taxis, personal vehicles and giant trucks were all part of the ceremony.  (Note the womans hair tie)

Confetti, holy water and beer were poured onto the engine of this typical taxi of Southern Peru.

Entire families attended the ceremonies.  (Note the man in the background at right pouring a beer onto the engine.)

The typical dress of Andean women mixes Andean and Spanish influences.

More recent images from Peru.

Here is some film images from my recent three week trip to Peru.  These are all from Peru’s capital city of Lima.  Pizarro founded the city in 1535 in the valleys of three conjoined rivers, hence the overcast and smoggy air quality as the surrounding desert mountains don’t let the air circulate out to the ocean.  Its said to be a dangerous place but I really dig it.  Its medieval, depressed, gritty and alive…much more then the more up-scale suburbs that most tourists and Limenos prefer.

New images from recent trip to Peru.

Just returned the other day from my second jaunt to the land of my girlfriend.  Spent 3 weeks, a couple in Lima then a week in the south where my moms and I tackled a day on the famed Inca Trail and then took in Machu Picchu.  Twice in 9 months..never thought that would happen..so don’t need to go there for about 5 years but lots more to see in Peru. I would like to visit a more recently discovered ruin in the north named “Kuelap” that is said to rival Machu Picchu and gets just a handful of tourists.  Also, the deserts of Ica are amazing for paleontology.  Take a walk back in there and u will literally stumble on exposed whale skeletons.

All the images here are from my G9 Point and Shoot.  I shot 20 rolls of film but haven’t gotten them souped yet.  The images are actually in the chronological order I shot them starting on Dec 21 to Jan 11th.  Lots more to come…

Step out of the seclusion of the up-scale areas of Lima (a city of 11 million) and this is a typical street corner with fairly typical people in Peru, excluding the highlands (the Andean regions) or in the Amazon.

Unintentional art installation from third world telephone wiring

Sunset at the beach two hours south of Lima. Colors have not been tweaked.

Clowns are all the rage at parties in Lima these days. They come in mid-party and pass out balloons and shit. We made a crazy hat which we were obsessed with doing for at least an hour...New Years night, from about 2-3am.

Flash lighting up water in the air at the beach during a quick New Years ceremony on the beach before sunrise.

These ghosts haunted us on our way back to the crib.

Paracas, a chain of islands off the Southern coast of Peru. Labeled the "poor mans galapagos" by Lonely Planet, its populated by tons of birds and fat little penguins. 100 years ago the tens of thousands of tons of bird guano was harvested there every year was Peru's richest exportable resource. It still is 5o meters deep on the islands and groups of men live on the islands for periods of four months at a time harvesting it every year.

A gorgeous lake in the desert isn't impervious to the spoils of Coke.

Controlled(?) burn off the Pan-American Sur on way back to Lima. Would of pulled over if I was driving..love the arrangement of people

Had Chicharron for breakfast. Super tasty/super greasy ham sandwiches.

Pigeons at the San Fransisco Church in Central Lima. The catacombs below it house 100's of mid-evil skeletons.

On our way up to a giant jesus statue on the top of mountain in Central Lima.

Lima.

Street scene in outer neighborhood of Lima.

Tico taxi's, a Korean mini, are ubiquitous in the south of Peru. This was in Cusco, the mid-evil city which one departs from to Machu Picchu

3 Andean girls descending from their mountain village south of Cusco.

It rained on my dear mum and I for about 5 hours on our hike on the Inca Trail. This was an amazing blossom off of a yucca plant, probably 15 ft high.

Even on our one day hike of the normally 4 day hike of the Inca trail, we still witnessed changes in Eco-systems. Here, we rounded the corner into a cloud forest valley with waterfalls just down the way. Was one of the most stunning natural settings I have ever laid my fairly well traveled feet.

Cloud Forest

Winay-Wayna ruin. Only accessible from the Inca Trail. Pre-Colombian Inca ruin with a huge amphitheater of terraced farming, 3 hours from Machu Picchu.

A bromeliad growing on a moss covered tree in the cloud forest.

The feet of an Andean porter on the Inca trail. His sandals are made from car tires.

Machu Picchu.

Llama at Machu Picchu. The flashy earrings are so the owners can tell them apart in a herd as they roam.

Survey of beef heads in market in Cusco.

Gordo nino en la mercado en Cusco.

Andean women of different regions wear different style of hats. This woman had such serious business concerning the man in the picture she is holding that I could freely shoot this usually camera shy culture.

This was a hilarious attempt of Chicken Cordon Bleu. The restaurant was called "Gordon Blue" and it was the house specialty so I gave it a try. 15/soles which was $5.00. The ham was baloney and the cheese was a white farmers fresh cheese so didn't really work but chicken was fried deliciously but jesus, they were nuts! That's a ton of food!!. Clockwise from Chicken at bottom: Choclo, the giant corn of Peru. Fresh cut french fries. Salad with strips of the fresh cheese, white rice with a poached egg, fried plantain.

View of mountains across from Machu Picchu.

The Urubamba river flows by Machu Picchu on its way north 450 miles to meet up with the Amazon river and then flows east to the Atlantic. This is the same river that the community I worked with in the amazon lived next to. At this point, the river is still near its headwaters in the high Andean mountains but its making its way down into the rain forest.

Story on our new blog against the cruiseship industry and government incompetence.

The new blog I am the photographer for, the South Brooklyn Post has a front page story on the cruiseship industry and how, when idling in the ports of Red Hook, Brooklyn, spew out emissions equal to 12,000 cars!  Please check it and pass it round. I am super proud of the piece because I feel it may bring attention to an underreported issue and actually exercising the power of journalism, something I don’t get to do as much as I would like.

The paper has just been up for about two weeks now and is an effort from me and a fellow Detroit Journalist Lisa Collins.

Story

M-52 at 65 mph w/ the G9 & fall colors

Coming back from a friend’s wedding in Cadillac, Michigan last weekend I decided to take some country roads.  After a look at the map and an hour of winding shite, I found M-52 and it was perfect.  The trees were blazing with fall color and farms ran along both sides of the road which yielded fields of sunflowers, farm houses, pumpkins, beautiful sky’s and rolling hills which is quite rare in Michigan.  At one point, off on a road to my right was a man coming towards me riding in a racing horse carriage sort of thing and just 3 seconds later, while contemplating what I had just seen, I glanced to my left to see a Tea Party Norman Rockwell scene.  A man, in head to toe camo, stepping out of his SUV and then his 5-year-old son followed, also in camo.  Hunting season in Michigan.

I later stopped off at a roadside farm stand that operates on the honor system which sorta boggles my brain when I try to comprehend it.  It’s so beautiful it’s almost sad.  Love that it actually exists in this era still.  I bought a large box of heirloom grape tomatoes for $1 as well as some tasty zucs and cucs.

Shooting at 55 mph is a fun exercise (errant focus areas, lots of errors, quick on the shutter draw practice) while usually producing some beautiful effects (motion blurs in the foregrounds with stable backgrounds, amazing contrast with opposing skies).

A Visual Salute to ole 52                      

“Necessity”, the mother of inventive head injuries.

Jaw dropping differences in safety practices  from the suburban landscapes of the US with this main throughfare in Iquitos, Peru, a Northern jungle town accesible only by air or water, left me safely standing in the middle of an intersection for 2 hours.

Road trip to the South of Peru

Fiorella nailed this just 80km from Lima.  Part of a roadside billboard.

For Christmas and New Years I ventured, along with my lady, to the Southern regions of Peru.  As a lover of road-trips I pushed for using the car and taking our time.  We seemed to enter a new eco-system every day..desert, dunes, coastal grass lined cliffs, mountains, canyons.  New Years Eve was spent in the bottom of the worlds deepest canyon in an adobe hut.  The 2.5 day long debacle of our car breaking down  at 12,000 ft.  was not fun while it happened nor has it gained a rosier shade upon recollection.  Getting out of Lima, a rather drab and chaotic mess of a city was probably the best part though some Peruvian “magic” was experienced.

Chivay, a small Andean town at the foot of Colca Canyon.

Chivay

Chivay farmer.

Casa in ruin.

The light around the area was as beauteous as I have ever seen.  This was taking in the canyon after sunset.

Our drunk burro driver kept falling asleep on the 2 hour sweaty, dusty, scary ride out of the canyon on New Years day morning.  Along the route were 3000 ft drops inches away from the burro’s feet so I was not super stoked to say the least.  We had walked down (and I walked like a zombie for days after) so when my princess said she wanted to take this way out I secretly was relieved.

Building a cairn at a nice spot where we lunched on sardines, octopus, olives, fresh butter and bread.

After being stranded for 24 hours in the middle of nowhere and dealing with a rescue vehicle Fiorella procured that had to be push started every 20 minutes, we finally got to another middle of nowhere place and a tow truck was our way out over a mountain pass back to Arequipa where we spent an extra half day getting the car fixed.  Fuel pump lined disconnected from bottoming out…

This was the scene across the street from the previous image.  Tried to teach this kid to do a “bunny hop”.

Shot from the backseat of our car while it was towed thru the mountains.

Fiorella scared the living shit out of me with a 2 minute long blood curdling scream while in a dune buggy in Huacachina, a cool little literal oasis city in the dunes.  We took the buggy up so I could try sandboarding and give my addiction of descent down hills with wood strapped to my feet a little dose of satisfaction (review: pretty fun though hard to link turns and sand is not so forgiving on the arse).  I thought she was having an anxiety attack and was going to give herself an aneurysm.  Turned out she was having a blast.  RUDE!

Vintage cars litter the streets of Lima creating a strange potpourri..

Since I arrived in Lima 2 months ago one thing that has continuously caught my eye are the automobiles.  It’s a strange and cool assortment.  It is like Cuba here as many vintage rides have survived, some more graciously then others to be sure, but these aren’t your garden variety Cuban 1950′s American classics.  This is a much stranger breed.  It’s mostly 1970′s Japanese models as well as a motley assortment of others that look like they may have been commandeered by the Shining Path.  Every time I venture out I have head-turning moments as these funky rides are ubiquitous, hilarious and rare.  And since I hail from the Motor City, thats something.

Another cool aspect to this is that what some folks here people are using for everyday rides would be used for show cars and Sunday cruisers in the US.

JK