Travel Photographers Network

Text and images by Lindy Drew - All rights reserved.

Ollantaytambo is a pueblo tucked in the Sacred Valley of the Peruvian Andes. It used to be known as a resting place for the Incas that traveled from Cuzco to the lost city of Machu Picchu. Stories of love, conquest, loss, and regrowth are told by the oldest villagers in Spanish and Quechua, passing down traditions and culture that are still so resiliently maintained and respected.

My visit to Peru brought me to this humble town, where for 2 weeks I mentored youth in photography through the group BRIDGES to Understanding (www.bridgesweb.org). BRIDGES is a Seattle-based non-profit organization founded by photographer Phil Borges. Borges and other guest instructors conduct international photography and storytelling workshops to giving kids a voice and a vehicle through which they can document their lives and cultures. The program grows with the help of volunteers who mentor youth while improving their own digital photography through lessons in advanced editing and moviemaking techniques. Although BRIDGES is based in the US and works with classrooms in the Seattle area, mentors also travel to the most remote places in Peru, Guatemala, India, and South Africa.

This trip started in Cuzco, Peru, before trekking one and a half hours deeper into the Sacred Valley. Cuzco is a city built for tourists with a beautiful town center, impeccable cobblestone streets, and open plazas. It is here where Machu Picchu’s spirit and energy is marketed as the place to see. Since it is the main hub before taking off to Machu Picchu, visitors pour into town, spending their currency converted into soles. Limited spaces are sold on the train ride up for a handsome price, and those who can afford it secure their golden ticket into South American’s Disneyland for a day. Most people go with a tour group, hopping on colorful buses that boast names like Adventure Travel. They are herded up to the amusement park like cattle and then come back down the mountain according to schedule to fill their bellies up in Cuzco’s bars and restaurants by nightfall. For $700 USD a night, an exclusive few can stay at the Sanctuary Lodge at the top of the mountain. As a South America hot spot for the typical tourist, Machu Picchu understandably profits by reaping the benefits of the few travelers that come to this part of the world. There are, however, more alternative routes to get to know the Sacred Valley aside from the typical tourist track.

Volunteering with BRIDGES, for example, is a really entertaining, cross-cultural way to travel by connecting with Peru’s people and the land through photography and moviemaking. BRIDGES has been active in Ollantaytambo for 3 years. The teenagers who participate here are sharp, sociable, and strong-minded. They form the local museum’s youth group known as Los Patos, The Footprints, and the CATCCO Museum is their stomping ground. In general, kids of all different social classes are welcome to participate in museum workshops, watch, learn, or just run around and play in what has become the community’s after school center. During our visit, the museum served as the home base for BRIDGES to work and edit. We had digital cameras of all sorts, laptops, overheads, and sound equipment laid out everywhere. Traditionally dressed Quechua speaking kids would watch quietly over the mentors shoulders as we worked to size and clean up images in Photoshop or as the BRIDGES teenagers reviewed their pictures. They were so drawn to the technology, so gentle, open, creative, and curious. It’s no wonder Ollanta has remained an important site that BRIDGES visits year after year.

Los Patos have grown with BRIDGES, making numerous socially conscious creative films about themselves and their community. Once the kids documented the responsibility they have to their families by working despite being underage. Another year they showed life as a street dog from a dog’s perspective in their village. But, as their skills advanced, so did their subject matter. Their most ambitious piece to date documented how dirty their pueblo’s rivers get from people carelessly throwing trash in them. In Ollanta, water flows through the town’s major streets, transported by canals built by their ancestors. Trash from the river clogs the canals, dirtying the water and streets. The kids tackled the topic by writing and photographing to bring recognition to the problem and clean up their community. They organized beautification projects, and put posters up promoting environmental awareness while discouraging pollution. They even took their movie to the town mayor who supported the kids’ clean up efforts. Through BRIDGES outreach, Ollanta’s youth has learned that their images and words are not only making movies, but making influential changes in their community, as well.

BRIDGES has recently expanded their program. The movies are now used not only for promoting social change in the students’ communities but also as a communication tool for students to share their stories with other communities and youth around the world. The goal is for students to share their stories directly with one another and create understanding and empathy across vast geographical and cultural bounds. Ultimately, they hope that students will share their stories directly with each other and engage in meaningful dialogue about important issues for the entire year.

This year, the kids and mentors in Peru tackled a huge community conflict by making a movie about how the kids view tourism in their tiny town. They painted a picture of the typical tourists as camera toting, water bottle buying, walking stick sightseers who arrive in big buses that clog their central plaza and congest their humble streets. Visitors come with just enough time to herd themselves to the archeological fortress, the town’s main highlight, but do not make time to do much more. Their visit is calculated and routine, rushed by the time schedule of what their tour package includes. As a result, tourists do not have time to purchase goods from local vendors or really have a chance to appreciate the culture and hospitality Ollanta has to offer.

In their film, the kids invite tourists to come for at least a day to take advantage of nearby villages like Willoq and Patacancha, where Quechua woman weave textiles and clothing from alpaca and lambs wool, and see more of the archeological ruins off the beaten path. After all, it is just a car, bike, or horse ride away. They also suggest trying a popular beverage unique to Peru called chicha, which is made from maiz (corn) and sure to relax the thirsty traveler and hard worker whom locals say cannot help but fall in love with this drink.

The film is titled Ollantaytambo: Living Inca City and narrated by Dina, a 16-year old who has been participating in BRIDGES since it began coming to her town. Along with her strong photography skills, her tenacity and work ethic are impressive and inspiring. We worked together to write the script in Spanish and despite having to fill in at her parent’s pharmacy till after dark, she would show up at the museum at 9pm, committed to edit and record in order to finish before the deadline. The older participants pulled the movie together in Premier and used Cuebase to edit sound. Background music from the region added another layer of life to the piece. The local radio station announced the night of the viewing and the kids posted flyers throughout the town to advertise. Ollanta is so small that word traveled mouth to mouth. The film was finished about a half hour before the screening. Before we knew it, the museum was packed with friends, family, travelers, and community members of all ages devouring popcorn and animal crackers, a cross-cultural phenomenon that apparently accompanies the movie watching experience around the world.

After the big premiere, BRIDGES treated the kids to pizza at a private congratulatory celebration. Only one of the participants could not make it because her parents asked her to work the front desk of their hostel that night. Her friends wrapped a few slices of pizza in a napkin and brought it to her as she was finishing her shift. The responsibilities that youth have in pueblos like Ollanta does not mean being preoccupied with game boys or iPod’s, dressing in brand name clothing, or having your own car when you get your license. What makes life here so distinct is how relationships, conversation, and what you create with your own hands and mind are valued more than anything. It is an experience for these kids to be given cameras and be guided through the process of photography. They look forward to it every year and the last day of this workshop a handful of them along with the museum staff escorted the mentors to the plaza to wish us well until next year when BRIDGES would be returning again.

About the Author

Lindy Drew is a freelance documentary and street photographer. She studied at The University of Arizona and at The School of the International Center of Photography in New York City. After coming to South America to explore the land and its people through the lens, she settled into Santiago de Chile for a year and a half as a volunteer at a home for girls through the non-profit organization VEGlobal. A documentary project about the children turned into a photography workshop called OJOS nuevos, sponsored by PENTAX and TakeGreatPictures.com, in which the kids had the chance to be behind their own digital point and shoots, too. Currently Lindy is continuing her travels to photograph up the spine of South America before making it back to the US. Her work has been exhibited in NY, Tucson, Chicago, Seattle, and Santiago and has been published in The Village Voice and Transitions Abroad Magazine.

Comments on TPN travel photography articles? Please feel free to send them to editor@travelphotographers.net. We would be pleased to hear from you! 

No comments