Zapallal/Yurinaki by Andrés Marroquín Winkelmann (October 27, 2009) 
(5 votes, average: 4.20 out of 5)
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Introduction
This week Jörg M Colberg is exploring cultural perspectives by presenting a week of photographers who were born in one country and emigrated to another at some point in their life. Today's presentation: Andrés Marroquín Winkelmann. Andrés Marroquín: Most of my works and my photography in general deal with social norms and cultural behaviors. I’m interested in finding out why people do what they do or react in certain ways to specific events. In order to deal with social, cultural or political issues, I use everyday life situations, familiar moments and ordinary objects. When I'm working on a theme and finding myself in the middle of an arresting situation, I don't just take a picture of it. Rather than creating an instant reproduction of an incident, I try to compose a visual arrangement of it, including the way it affected me and the thoughts it brought about. I’m interested in photography as a result of a mental process, in shaping a project in order to convey a certain message. I believe a photograph succeeds when its visual impact manages to invite us into a certain state, where our thoughts and ideas may have the opportunity to take aspects we normally wouldn’t think of.
Next / I Left The East Valley Sixteen Years Ago / Previous / A Childhood Spent Moving Between Russia And The US /
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...
A country with 27,012.900 inhabitants and 39.3% poverty. One third of the population lives in rural areas and 9 millions live in Lima, Peru’s political and economical capital city. Two years ago, 20% of the children didn’t have an opportunity to attend school.
The number of slums surrounding the capital city has grown radically over the last 15 years. Some became neighborhoods and others even districts.
Zapallal lies on the peruvian coast, only 40 km out of Lima’s city center. To get to Yurinaki, a small village located in the jungle, you have to get over an elevation of 4755m above sea-level and travel for fourteen hours using public transportation. Peru's climate diversity, rough geography and economical situation increase cultural differences within the country.
With the help of the communities of Zapallal and Yurinaki, I started a photographic project, that deals with life conditions in these particular surroundings.
I wasn’t interested in creating a classic reportage or using a journalistic approach. I wanted the community to participate in the project and involved my subjects in the creative process. They helped me composing the images, selecting and arranging characteristic elements of these surroundings, searching for typical spaces to stage every-day situations in order to deal with social and political issues.
Most of the people now living in Zapallal came from the countryside to the outskirts of Lima, hoping to find better work opportunities and establish a solid economical wealth. The high percentage of unemployment and an overpopulated capital city didn’t leave them many chances except starting all over again.
Most of the people I photographed in this project experienced this social instability. After a few years of development the several tendencies and stages, all emerging from this same origin, became noticeable.
Rural areas are almost ignored by the government, they don’t even exist on Peru's financial map.
In places like Yurinaki, this kind of isolation increases the already conservative mentality and later on evolves into distrust. The elder generations doubt and disbelieve almost everything related to change. Absurd and old fashioned habits still remain active; young men marrying older women, obligating them to work on the fields, or having as many children as possible to increase the number of workers inside the family.
In most of the cases families are only learning how to improve and adjust simple ideas about hygiene, social behavior and human rights through younger generations and thanks to educational programs supported by international and private institutions. Most of these children motivate their families to set new values at home, they are often considered to be role models or even heads of their families. Thereby they set a new starting point to the development of a social behavior.
Andrés Marroquín Winkelmann (1983) lives and works in Berlin, Germany.
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