Lima Beaches / Ateliers SNCF by Ricardo Yui (October 13, 2009) 
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Categories / Architecture / Cityscapes / Conceptual Photography / street photography / / Click here to open comments section, click again when done to close / 1 Comment
Guest curators: Mari Carmen Arata and Roberto Huarcaya
Mari Carmen Arata (Peru, 1960): "My interests include art and modernity, related to images, in Latin America and the Andean world; anthropology and political sociology, memory and identity; mestizaje and history. I am also interested in cultural development, multidisciplinary investigation, promotion of education and rescue and diffusion of culture. I am in charge the cultural area of the Centro de la Imagen (Lima) including the gallery El Ojo Ajeno where I am also working as a curator for some of our exhibitions." Roberto Huarcaya (Peru, 1959). As a photographer Roberto has participated in the Habana Biennale (1997), Lima Biennale (1997, 1998 and 2000), as well as in the Venice Biennale (2001). He founded the Gaudi Institute of Photography and the Centro de la Imagen in Lima where he is currently Director. He has 10 individual exhibitions in Lima as well as in other cities like Paris, Barcelona, Santiago de Chile, Guayaquil and Buenos Aires. He has participated in more than a hundred collective exhibitions internationally.
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Our poll "A photo essay always needs a great written story" closed. 267 people voted, 28% agrees, 72% disagrees. 233 people answered our follow-up question "Are you a photographer?" 82% indicated they are, 18% said no. Initially, negative answers to question #1 were almost 100% as was the pecentage of photographers among respondants. Then, when the level of non-photographers started to rise, the percentage of people indicating good text is always essential started to rise too. This seems to indicate that non-photographers think that adding good text to your photo essays is essential. In my opinion: if you want non-photographers to dig your work, you know what to do...
In Playas de Lima (Lima beaches), Ricardo plays with the word “beach” which in Spanish is the same word for “parking lot”. In this sense the project “Lima beaches” means “Lima’s parking lots”, and it becomes an ambiguous swinging from the notions of landscape and identity, because the ocean and the beaches of Lima are the cultural reference per se for Lima’s artists.
The urban landscape of downtown Lima reveals multiple perspectives in which a variety of architectural styles coexist and constantly negotiate a leading role. As they form a visual weft, all of them can be seen as layers that shape the urban history of the city.
As a passionate admirer of architecture, Ricardo says that you could gaze at Lima’s landscape “as if you were reading the index of the book that compiles the urban history of the city”.
At the same time, cars act as a representation of trapped time offering clues that set the viewers into a context that is not able to define itself (consequence of the slow rotation of the Peruvian auto industry).
The pictures suggest the aesthetic approach to an urban landscape consisting of structures of historical reference, that swing with the cars' visual rhythms: every one of the architectonic trends is seen as a reverberation of its time and each one of the cars is a fragment of the present time trying hard to remain valid.
In his second project, Ateliers SNCF, Ricardo explores the documentation of an interrupted space.
In 2008 Ricardo won an award given by the National School of Photography of Arles (France), and the Centro de la Imagen (Lima), and spent three months in Arles. This is a project developed at the train repair station that in the near future will become a rencontre for the development of visual arts.
Currently the place does not have any sense or practical social utility. It is a waste, a contradiction itself.
It means everything and at the same time it means nothing. It means progress and decadency, a ruin, and as such it evokes the changing values of society, that become to be a testimony of a contemporary civilization.
Ricardo Yui (1983) lives and works in Lima, Peru.
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