Peru Photo Essay: Christmas in the Barrios

By Flemmingbo

  

“Stop!!!!” – I am quite sure it was Amy who first screamed what we all wanted, to stop the car. We had just spotted these wonderful people dressing up in the ‘barrios’ neighborhood of the town of Arequipa. Out jumps 9 photographers, like a task force, causing quite a stir. Fortunately the incredibly cool and nice people loved having 9 photographers documenting their small intimate Christmas festival, one of my favorite events in the entire workshop and unscripted, entirely by chance that we happened to be passing by. They invited us to stay and partake in the festivities, wanting to share their food and beer. What incredible hospitality, 9 photographers show up and they instantly invites us in to dinner. Peruvians are cool.

This is the photo essay I submitted for our second review, day 3 of the Photoexperience.net Peru workshop with Daniel Milnor.  Slightly modified version, featuring Dan’s suggestions for sequencing. Quite happy with this essay, the first two images are two of my favourites from Peru and good images do not happen often and require a lot of work. I am very excited about working this way, always thinking of an image series and a story. Documentary photography, storytelling and bookmaking was the reason for doing the workshop and is where my focus and interest is, exciting and challenging.