Lorry Salcedo, Peru
I began my photography career with this project in 1985. Since then, I have always focused on topics relating to African culture. It has been a constant in my life: my best friends and my new family have African ancestors.
In the Shadow of the Guarango Tree reveals different stages in my career as a photographer. I began by doing straight documentary photography, but then I photographed things from the inside out, I let myself be seduced by my subjects and we established an intimate, passionate relationship together, almost like life partners. In this regard, my friend, photographer Pepe Casals, now deceased, wrote the following in the catalogue for my first show in 1987: “Lorry Salcedo brings us a collection of portraits of living and, above all, vibrant beings. One part of this collection shows us their ‘inner life’ and the other, outdoor portraits, which depict the surprise of the encounter…. The document is already there, and [Salcedo] further shows it to us as an expression of love towards the human being who shelters it and displays the kind of naturalness that is so difficult to achieve.”
(b. 1957) Lima, Peru/ New York, United States
In both still and moving images, Lorry Salcedo has documented the Afrodescendant traditions, culture, and communities of his native country. He received a residency grant from the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund in 1994, which allowed him to undertake the project Africa’s Legacy in Brazil and Peru. He is the author of Los Huamachucos. Testimonios de una gran cultura (Asociación Civil Ruta Moche, 2013), which gathers portraits and architectural views of a sacred site in northern Peru. In 2007 he directed and produced his first full-length documentary film, El fuego eterno. The retrospective exhibition Historias iluminadas. Lorry Salcedo, 30 años de fotografía y cine constitutes a through survey of this distinguished photographer’s entire body of work. He is currently director and curator of the New York Peruvian Film Showcase.
