Selva Virgen at Casa Inmobiliaria in Lima, Peru

I have some photos up in a group show in Lima called Selva Virgen, Salvaje y Sensual. It’s currently up at the Casa Inmobiliaria located on Javier Prado Oeste and Los Castanos (on the off chance you’re in Lima). The title translates as “Virgin Jungle: Salvage and Sensual.” The photos mostly deal with the culture and people of the  Amazon region in Peru. In the rest of Peru, the region and especially it’s largest city Iquitos is perceived as sensual and libertine, a sort of Brazil-in-Peru. A lot of the photos in the exhibit deal with this one way or another.

Here’s the promo card for the exhibit:

Selva Virgen promo image

The show features ten photographers and two painters. It was curated by the painter Christian Bendayan who is from Iquitos and whom I’ve blogged about before. It’s a real honor to be included in this group and my only regret is not being able to be in Lima to check it out. Fortunately, thanks to Facebook, I’ve been able to piece together some random shots, which I’ll share here to give you a sense of the show.

Casa Inmobiliaria, site of Selva Virgen show in Lima, Peru (photo courtesy of Carlos Pacaya)

The show is housed in a old mansion that will be demolished soon for a luxury high rise. In the meantime, the space is functioning as an art exhibition space (and sales office). Back in March, when I was in Lima, I blogged about a show there called Miscelanea (todo se queda en casa).

Here’s some work by the different photographers in the show:

Adrian Portugal

Adrian Portugal (photo courtesy of Carlos Pacaya)

Adrian Portugal of Supay Fotos, features images of female dancers and it looks like they are over-painted with black-light paint. This neon paint is used a lot in popular bars and discos in Iquitos.

Adrian Portugal (photo courtesy of guiame.pe)

(photo courtesy of guiame.pe)

I love the way the paint drips off this photo and glows under the UV light. Again, it’s a shame I can’t go to the show.

Antonio Escalante

Antonio Escalante shows photographs of older women (maybe prostitutes?) in dark interior spaces. In addition to the photos, I like the frames and the colorful wallpaper. In general, there was a lot of thought put into the presentation of the photos and the use of the space.

Antonio Escalante (photo courtesy of guiame.pe)

Antonio Escalante (photo courtesy of guiame.pe)

Sandro Aguilar has pictures of naked women in the forest and a few pictures taken with a holga that I quite like. I’d love to see more but he doesn’t seem to have a website. Update: he does have a website.

Sandro Aguilar

Sandro Aguilar (photo courtesy of Carlos Pacaya)

Sandro Aguilar (photo courtesy of Carlos Pacaya)

Rodrigo Rodrich photographs various indigenous groups in the forest with a softbox. I believe these were originally for a magazine assignment. They are nice group arrangements. I think photographing groups is next to impossible so I always appreciate it when I see it done well.

Rodrigo Rodrich

Rodrigo Rodrich (photo courtesy of guiame.pe)

Musuk Nolte shows very expressive, black and white pictures of boys with water splashing all around them. I seem to recall these having something to do with the insane asylum in Iquitos, but I may be confusing these with other photographs.

Musuk Nolte (photo courtesy of guiame.pe)

Musuk Nolte (photo courtesy of guiame.pe)

Gihan Tubbeh’s photos feature female erotic dancers.

Gihan Tubbeh (photo courtesy of guiame.pe)

Marcos Lopez, from Argentina, features several photographs from the main cemetery in Iquitos, altho it looks like they were instead painted on the wall for the exhibit, which looks really cool.

Marcos Lopez

Marcos Lopez (photo courtesy of guiame.pe)

Morfi Jimenez does black and white portraits, often with flash, which he then colors-in, in the mode of Felice Beato or Jan Saudek (the promo-card image for the show is his).

Morfi Jimenez (photo courtesy of Carlos Pacaya)

Here’s a gallery of Jimenez’s Iquitos images (since they don’t seem to be on his website).

Carlos Sanchez Giraldo is showing this series of three, round panels that look like they are painted. Sanchez also organized the Retratos Pintados show that I really liked back in March.

Carlos Sanchez Giraldo (photo courtesy of Carlos Pacaya)

Carlos Sanchez Giraldo

I’m in the show too 🙂

This is actually my first curated group show, so I’m really pleased. The work and the installations look amazing. I’m just sad I can’t be in Lima to see the show. I’m showing a selection of portraits that I made last year in Iquitos.

My photos (photo courtesy of Carlos Pacaya)

My photos (photo courtesy of Carlos Pacaya)

Carlos below his photo (courtesy of Carlos Pacaya)

That’s Carlos, one of the guys I photographed, standing below his photo in the show. He lives in Lima now, so he was able to attend the opening (and post a lot of these pictures to Facebook, not to mention give me permission to post them here). I haven’t put any of this work up on my website yet. I was in Iquitos again this year and made a ton more portraits which I haven’t been able to scan yet. I do have the photos from last year scanned but I’ve been waiting to do a more final edit. Still, here’s a few of my portraits that were in the show.

Carlos

Roger

Christian

Here’s a full list of the participating photographers (with links, where I found them): Antonio Escalante, Musuk Nolte, Adrián Portugal, Morfi Jimenez, Rodrigo Rodrich, Marcos López, Gihan Tubbeh, Sandro Aguilar, José Ashuco Araujo, Carlos Sánchez Giraldo and Luis Sakiray.

Sujeto de Derecho

El Comercio is Peru’s main (only) broadsheet newspaper. They are participating in Lima’s Photography Biennial with a show of high minded photojournalism called Sujeto de Derecho (the name means something like “legal person” but there’s probably a second meaning that I’m missing). The show collects various photo essays by current and former photographers for the paper that deal with disadvantaged people struggling (and succeeding) to make a better life for themselves. I’m very jealous of photojournalists in Perú because they get to take pictures in such a visually spectacular country.

Sujeto de Derecho at Casa Rimac

The show is being held at the Casa Rimac in downtown Lima. It looks like an old bank building. The lobby is filled with huge hanging prints by Karen Zárate about a project building a resevoir for herders to water their fields of grass so that their cows can graze and produce milk year round. I felt like the ginormous prints cluttered the space and were a little pretentious but you have got to hand it to paper for going big. The rest of the show meanders through the ground floor of the building with different rooms showcasing the various essays.

La maloca de Babel by Leslie Searles

I was interested in this story by Leslie Searles about a center for indigenous university students in Iquitos that takes the shape of a traditional shelter called a maloca. Here’s a video for the story.

The best part of the show was the flyer. El Comercio, being a newspaper, printed up an insert with all of the stories. They look great–maybe even better than they do on the wall. This is not a dig since this is photojournalism. These photos belong on newsprint.

Newspaper insert for the show (I still have flip-flop tan lines from my two months in the jungle)

Sujeto de Derecho, Pascuala y el Pozo de Agua by Karen Zarate

Sujeto de Derecho, Los Ojos de Parán by Rolly Reyna

The show and insert are sort of the ideal world for photojournalism. All the stories are uplifting and visually compelling. There’s no boring press conferences, celebrity gossip or crass advertising. The show affirms the talent of the paper’s photographers. I wish these essays were on El Comercio’s website (they have an inactive blog of photo essays, Mírate, which hasn’t been updated since Sept. 2010). It would at least make my life easier as a blogger. Here’s a list of all the participating photographers with their website, where I could find one: Karen Zárate, Antonio Escalante (Cerro Cachito), Sergio Urday, Juan Ponce, Ana Cecilia Gonzáles Vigil, Dante Piaggio, Polly Reyna, Sebastián Castañeda, Giancarlo Shibayama, Musuk Nolte, Leslie Searles, Daniel Silva, Enrique Cuneo, Miguel Bellido and Richard Hirano.

Musuk Nolte – Decierto

While in Lima last month, I visited Galeria Lucila de la Puente in Barranco where I came across the following photo.

Musuk Nolte - Decierto

I had assumed it was an intervention in the desert, land art. In fact, the line designates plots of land in a soon to be occupied settlement on the outskirts of Lima. The photo is part of a series by Peruvian photographer Musuk Nolte called “decierto”, a play on the words desert and “decir” (to say). It contains austere photos of traces of human settlement on the land surrounding the Peruvian capital. The gallery’s website has a selection of images from the series. Nolte also belongs to a collective of photojournalists, Versus Photo, which shows a very different style of work.

Musuk Nolte - Decierto

Musuk Nolte - Decierto