"El Dorado"

"El Dorado", which translates as "The Golden One", is one of the poorest hills in Lima, Peru. My intention with this series is to honor the slums and extend through beauty the possibilities of other ways of experiencing and understanding life.

A few years ago I had the opportunity to live for a while in "El Dorado", a hill located in Puente Piedra, one of the poorest districts of Lima, Peru. Despite the challenging living conditions, living in "El Dorado" prompted me to train my gaze to recognize its own order, generous in images of a certain poetic quality; images that fed my sensitivity and kept me strengthened in my vocation as an artist.

In “El Dorado” the absence of police control gives way to improvised urban development, where the most vulnerable people invade lands and build with their own hands a place to survive. The young population has moved in search of education and work to other parts of the capital, thus leaving a desolate landscape, where industries take advantage of the low price of land to set up their warehouses.

The depth and simplicity of the life of its inhabitants, an area that despite its lack of resources struggles and improvises in an attempt to urbanize, and the unexpected presence of beauty in such a wild landscape are themes that I address in this visual essay.

Although this hill and many others, as well as its inhabitants, are invisible to the great development of the capital city, beauty as a phenomenon has been fairer and has not been absent; Finding it and sharing it is my way of putting "El Dorado" on the table.