Sean Rocha

Portraits from Lima, Peru, 1916

There were few treasures to be found a month ago at the flea market in Parque Kennedy in Lima’s prosperous Miraflores district, but amid the drek of newly made trinkets and gaudy textiles there was a table belonging to a gruff older man in no hurry to sell anything: he had the good stuff.  As I sifted through a small pile of old photographs, Peruvians approached him to ask the price of an antique telephone or 19th century book and then walked away in disbelief.  I collect early-20th century portrait cards — like this one and this one, both from Italy — and though he had only a few of those he had something more unusual: these tiny (maybe 3″ x 1.5″) portraits, many of men in uniform, ripped from a larger album with handwritten text dating them to 1916.  There were roughly thirty of them and I tried to disguise my interest by adding some of the larger photographs.  His price was unreasonable, as I’d expected.   I ostentatiously removed some of the large photographs but in the heat of exchange my counter-offer was limited to the numbers I could remember in Spanish, and even those I ended up pronouncing as if they were Italian.  Perhaps for this reason, he showed some mercy: I took them all and am now in search of the story that binds them.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 2nd, 2011 at 12:17 pm. It is filed under Found Object and tagged with Lima, Peru, photography, portraits, South America. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.