Inflamable Lama Gallery
Cuzco, Peru 2007
® Chad Anderson
I hold a freshly unearthed human skull in my hand, someone’s mother or father, son or daughter from the nearby pueblo of Maras. It’s being moved to make way for someone else; the workers’ donkey wanders among the graves eating any fresh flowers left behind. What an amazing place! We’ve returned to this town three or four times in the past week. A wedding, a baptism, several processions and lots of dancing (I’ve discovered I better leave the dancing to the locals). At times, I can not photograph, too impressed by the beautiful scenes of daily life unfolding all around me…not to mention the stunning snow-capped Andes. My third trip with Ernesto, second trip to Peru, each better than the last. I’ll be back next year with Ernesto, God willing, but…I think I’ll pass on the Wednesday night chicken dinner special. Chad Anderson
® Mina Navarrino
I don’t know much about photography, but it appeals to me.
What struck me from the very start of the workshop with Ernesto was the amazing familiarity with the things Ernesto said in his “unconscious lessons” during our trips by car, at dinner, in our conversations while we ran after photographic situations: the idea that goes beyond the expressive means itself and makes a photo not only the shot of a moment, of a particular situation and a place, but also that unwillingly reminds you of something else. That “universal quality” of which Ernesto talks about, that you cannot improvise and doesn’t consist only of the moment captured: it is that very moment, but again such moment has been constructed by superimposition, it is the total expression of an approach to life intimate and personal, of accumulated things that suddenly find their natural placement. The workshop’s experience has been a personal and moving re-discovery, new not only for the novelty of the technical aspects of my camera (which I still need to get familiar with!) and, yet, already known for having tasted it in other forms of art such as music, cinema, literature. Now, the challenge is to grow in order to communicate these emotions, to transmit one’s own vision with that particular personal touch which distinguishes one another, and which also goes through the learning process to reach that very personal vision, and the courage of editing (it’s true that cutting IS adding!), the curiosity, the patience and the desire to know. Mina Navarrino
® Simona Turin
