CARLOS JIMÉNEZ CAHUA : "This young Peruvian photographer, now based in New York, returned to Lima to document the city’s unchecked sprawl into the desert, where flimsy plywood houses huddle together, as if for warmth. Jiménez Cahua takes the long view, typically framing broad landscape vistas from an omniscient, elevated perspective, so teeming neighborhoods appear unpopulated, toy-like." NYer (alt view)
posted by vronsky on Oct 22, 2009 - 11 comments

The wonderful online history journal Common-Place is presenting a special issue entitled "Early Cities of the Americas." Nineteen essays, each concerning a particular incident, person, place or encounter in the early life of a city, together provide a "worm's eye view" of what urban life was like in early postcolonial North and South America. Learn about vigilante justice and press sensationalism in 1856 San Francisco, or about a day in the life of a peasant family in Lima of the 1760s. Other essays concern the 17th-century "treasure city" of Havana, searching for salvation as a slave in 1647 New Amsterdam (New York), and capital punishment in colonial Paramaribo, Suriname. "Reading these essays cannot but help readers gain some historical perspective on the modern condition," especially as you see how many of the issues we associate with modern urban life (poverty, crime, bowling?) are not exactly recent developments.
posted by arco on Jul 15, 2003 - 5 comments

Huarochiri: A Peruvian Culture in Time. 'Huarochir is an Andean province near Lima, Peru. This site offers an ethnographic and historical tour of some of its communities. It samples the Huarochir Quechua Manuscript, which alone among colonial documents explains a pre-Christian tradition in an Andean language, and visits modern highlanders who inhabit and interpret the mythic landscape.' Related :- Martin Chambi. Chambi was an Amerindian Peruvian photographer famous for his photographs of indigenous Andean life. The site is in Spanish - no impediment to enjoying the photographs.
posted by plep on May 28, 2003 - 3 comments