Letter to time

What pieces or projects have you been working on lately?

For some years now I have been working on a photographic project that, for now, I'll call Letter to time. It is an exploration of the everyday, the fragile, and the intimate. By carefully looking at what surrounds me, I record ephemeral scenes: the light filtering through the blinds, a piece of ice about to break, birds in flight, the portrait of someone I may not see so often, a dish served just before it disappears. I approach these images without a strong conceptual framework, rather from a spontaneous, playful, even from a place of slight innocence.

What did you learn (or unlearn) while working on them?

I have learned to look at the world through analog photography, which for me is very different from digital. Walking around with a light and completely manual camera, where each shot is scarce, has made me more aware of my gaze and of what -things or people- I decide to focus on. It has also taught me to observe light and to read its glints, shimmers and shadows as messages coming from somewhere. I feel that light always has something to say, and my task is to interpret it: to ask myself what illuminates, what it leaves in shadow, and why

That close coexistence with the camera makes me feel accompanied. Since I migrated to Madrid in 2018, I have gone through many moments of loneliness and doubts about the decision to stay. Perhaps the camera is, for me, the space where I go narrating my life on this side of the world, with the intention of reminding me that here I am, and here I continue.

What words, ideas or emotions were going through your head?

I think what moves me most to photograph is the feeling that what I am seeing is about to end, to fade, to disappear and never return. I don’t experience it as something tragic, but rather as an almost visceral need to preserve it, to make it mine, to try to stop it, even though I know it's an absolute fiction, an illusory dream.

Photographing in analog, without seeing the result immediately, gives me other rhythms. Developing, waiting, receiving the images from the surprise... all this makes me think of a slower time, almost circular. The past inscribed in each photograph speaks to me: I feel those images as messages that my former self sends me, and that I gather little by little with the intention of, someday, putting together a visual story. There is something profoundly magical in that process of waiting and not knowing what could finally be revealed.

Were there any conversations, movies, music, or books that made their way into that work?

The book The years by Annie Ernaux made me think about the ephemeral nature of what we see, about the passing of time and about photography as a silent witness of what has been lived. There are phrases of hers that stuck in my mind: “All images will disappear.” and “To save something from the time when we will never be there anymore.” I feel that he speaks from a certain resignation and coldness, but also with a deep desire to preserve what we see, what we live, what we feel. I like to imagine that, in the future, when many years have passed, I will look at these photographs with the same gaze with which Ernaux approaches memory: from a kind of melancholy and gratitude.

I also believe that Sofia Coppola's cinematography has marked me ever since I saw The Virgin Suicides, many years ago. he way her camera lingers on certain objects, and her use of natural light, evokes a sensitivity to everyday life: pauses, colors, textures, empty spaces. Her gaze on so-called “feminine” processes is imbued with intimacy, solitude, and uncertainty, and that inspires me.

And, finally, there is a poem that accompanies me: This is just to say, by William Carlos Williams. It is a very short text, but in it I find an enormous teaching: the possibility of looking at the everyday with tenderness, of discovering beauty in the simplest things, in what could go unnoticed. Perhaps that is why I feel it so close to photography: that ability to rescue the small, the fleeting, and turn it into memory.

What's been the most difficult thing you've faced recently in your creative process?

I think the most difficult thing for me is to conceptualize what I do. I have been taking these photos for many years almost without realizing what I was building: for me it was rather an accompaniment to daily life, something I was doing in parallel to my doctoral thesis, which studies violence against women during the internal armed conflict in Peru from the works of women artists. That is why I feel that this work was born from intuition and spontaneity, without having to think about it too much.

I have been sharing images on social networks, but without a clear guide or someone to help me look beyond the obvious. It is a project to which I have not yet found a limit: I don't know when I'm going to stop, although maybe I'm about to think about it with more body and direction. In the end, images speak to us, and I feel that mine have already begun to whisper to each other.

What is your favorite restaurant and what do you recommend we order?

 My favorite restaurant is called Isolina and it’s located in the Barranco neighborhood of Lima, Peru. I’d start with a pisco sour, then have a ceviche with fried octopus, seco de cordero, and for dessert, a crema volteada—undoubtedly the best in Lima.  

If your life were a movie this month, what would it be called and who would write the soundtrack?

I think that uncertainty has been very present in this month, so I would name it A little more salt. The soundtrack would be by the peruvian singer La lá.

Recommend us an artist you follow who inspires you, and tell us what you like most about their work or their way of working.

I really admire the work of the peruvian artist Ana Lía Orézzoli. She is a photographer who also captures the everyday and the intimate. In addition to creating exhibition projects where photography opens up to new possibilities of display, she has produced self-published photobooks in which she plays with words. Combining images and text is one of the processes I admire most, and I think she makes it look and sound wonderful.