Pasajeros/Passengers by Flor Ruiz
Issue 156

Passengers is an instant in the here and now, the result of photographing through the window of the car or bus, the images, people, things that are being displaced and that accompany the driver of these vehicles that move in diverse spaces in the routes of the jungle coast of Peru. The photographer takes care to center these trucks in her frame, to contextualize the precise spaces and moments on the route of these passengers.

As an altarpiece or multicolored box, these "Passengers" range from Christs, religious motifs, iconic characters such as Ernesto Che Guevara or an evangelical pastor of the Israeli church, passing through elements or beings of the flora, fauna and destinations of the Andean country, which have been painted with intense, phosphorescent colors, typical of the worldview and art of the Peruvian Amazon. The painters are, in general, local residents linked to the painting trade as a subsistence trade, who contribute their art and construction of the pieces from their vision and some particular requirement of the owner of the truck.

Giant pieces of wood resulting from illegal logging, water, livestock, food, beer cases, itinerant markets, inmates, people about to arrive at the patron saint's party or others who arrive to work or because they move huddled together between packages from one destination to another, among others, they become the “Passengers” registered on winding, winding, poorly built or devastated routes in urban or rural areas where inclement weather also causes these trucks to be stranded or let us see the dust or context of abandonment. It is noteworthy that it is the truck drivers who make the request to have painted Christs or religious motifs as an amulet or co-pilot to bless their route.

The photographic project Passengers in its representation, starts from the vision of objectifying the subjects and humanizing the elements. Somehow, felled trees-packages- animals-water-people all end up being passengers who have to be moved from one point to another, between life and death impulses. From an origin to an end. Between the utility for a good, the tree ends up at a point to be a piece of the floor, the provisions, animals, water end up being a good, food, service, while human beings move between the risk and the informality of transport, travel as reified beings. This representation is the daily life "blessed and in colors" that whoever mobilizes it, its driver and owner, asks to be blessed while accompanied by images, which are framed in faded landscapes, between very dissimilar routes in an informal country with a lot of popular roots without rules or regulations for parking or carrying any load.

Passengers allows the photographer to find a narrative of understanding of her country, inclusive, distant and diverse, that gives face to the colors and other parallel realities in itself, as life impulses that coexist with risk and tragedy in a country that gives face to entrepreneurship and optimism despite its circumstances.

Flor Ruiz (she/her/ella) lives and works in Lima, Peru.
@florruizperu

Images © Flor Ruiz