Turning over soil for planting, Ccenta, Pampachiri, Peru.
One of the things I’m going to do with this newly updated website is look over old images taken on my first two trips to Peru. The scope of agricultural land that has been abandoned is almost impossible to comprehend—it’s visible in this image across the valley—lines almost appearing to shift like an optical illusion when you look at it straight on. When farmers work the land here they have brutal hikes up and down the steep incline before and after each workday. The hikes alone knocked me out when I was there, but the people who travel these trails every day do it nimbly although they are burdened with plows, babies and lunch.
In this photograph the woman who stands looking back is the owner of the chakra, or plot, and she had recently moved back to the region for part of the year almost as a kind of retirement hobby with her husband. This kind of influx of new/old faces is a boon to the local economy, which is suffering badly since the terrorism years of the 80s and 90s.