Johnny Miller Photography

In January 2022 I visited several communities in Peru documenting the processes of cultural practice and brain health. This project was made possible with the help of the Atlantic Fellows, of which I am a Senior Fellow, and other Senior Fellows Alex Kornhuber, Rowena Richie, and Martiza Pintado-Caipa.

Many Peruvians, especially those in rural areas who move to Lima, find themselves displaced for the purposes of economic upliftment. There are more jobs in Lima, more opportunities, and more money, or so the saying goes. It’s attractive: Over 30% of the population of the country lives in the Lima metropolitan region, making it one of the largest cities in the Americas. It’s grown tremendously in the last 50 years, and new satellite communities extend far into the distance, receding from view in the foggy atmosphere and rolling purple Andean foothills. 

Most of these new internal migrants arrive from are the vast fertile valleys and plains of the Andes mountains. Here is where most people think of when they conjure images of “authentic Peru”. Colorful fabric, large and varied hats, potatoes and guinea pigs, and beautiful high-altitude mountain scenery. Life is lived close to the land. Most villagers near Pisac (a city near Cusco) survive on subsistence farming, and occasionally sell woven fabric products to tourists, made from alpaca, sheep, or synthetic fabrics. Several people own eco-lodges, and others work as porters or cooks for multi-day treks to Macchu Picchu. Relationships, tradition, and weather are top priorities. Transportation is arduous and time-consuming. 

These two locations could not be more physically and environmentally different from each other. Lima is rocky, arid, and urban, noisy and polluted. The smell of burning garbage, industrial landscapes, and scraps of wood and metal make up the tableau of a typical poor suburb like Vila María del Trionfo, where Enedina Conspiciona Avilez Soto (67) and her husband, Adolfo Rivera Tacuchi (73) live. Their home is on a steep slope reachable only by foot, with a dramatic view of a nearby cement factory, and water only when a tanker truck arrives (sometimes twice a week). Adolfo is a religious man, animated and nearly deaf, fond of wearing wide-brimmed hats and showing photos of his beloved calf to me on his mobile phone. “I used to fall asleep curled up next to her to keep warm”, he told me. “I could hear her chewing throughout the night - crunch, crunch, crunch.” Enedina is perhaps the more wizened of the two, crying when she remembers her troubled childhood, gifted away as a baby from her mother, abused repeatedly by her husband, and eventually here on the mountaintop in Lima, spiritually alone if not physically, peeling garlic for several pesos per day. She does not seem to “miss” the mountains or her previous time in the villages, and lives life in the moment in a refreshing yet utterly solipsistic way. Once a day or so she trudges up the slope to a rock, avoiding the waste and feral dogs which surround it, and looks out across the valley in a pondering position, elbow on knee, hand under chin. 

What can I say but that I feel some sort of kindred understanding to this strange, foreign scene? The aging matriarch sitting on a rock, gazing across time and space, is both wholly within a place and without. It could be Dar es Salaam, Shanghai, or Los Angeles. It could be me, traveling through the world with much greater privilege, but also feeling a shade of emotions that we both would identify as the same color - longing, belonging, home, and family. Enedina’s life, like many of the people in the villages, is a mix of modernity and ancient wisdom, opportunism and patience. 

In the village of Paru Paru, high above the town of Pisac, Sonia Mamani (20) cut short her studies once she became pregnant; she now helps her grandfather shear sheep and raises her daughter, Mia (15 months), by herself while her father works in the gold mines in the jungle. Sonia wears eyeglasses and dresses in modern clothes, both of which are unusual in a community where tradition reigns supreme. At her grandfather’s home, ringed with mountains, the sheep wander through ancient paddocks made of stone, and potatoes grow in infinite variety along the grassy slopes. 

Ancient traditions and folklore here are interspersed seamlessly with modern technology and the Christian religion. The Covid-19 pandemic is just the latest in a series of interventions from Peruvian authorities to make sense of and “modernize” these remote communities, and the new road from Pisac winds past murals of men and women, each in the unique style of hat for each community, wearing masks. But the villagers in the town of Huilloc, not far from Paru Paru, have mixed traditions of healing with dubious origins - namely, the washing of their hair in the urine of children to prevent Covid-19 infection. 

Synthetic fabric is popular amongst the weavers, because the resulting products are much brighter than traditional dyed yarn from sheep and alpaca - and of course, more valuable to tourists looking to buy them. Mobile phone towers dot the hillsides. The concept of bed-and-breakfasts, eco-lodges, and psychotherapeutic tourism using ayahuasca are discussed over traditional lunches of grilled guinea pig and boiled potatoes. The city, and especially Lima, seems very far away - almost an impossible distance. The constant influx of tourists from foreign countries, however, is taken for granted. 

What can an outsider make of these seemingly bizarre and contradictory notions of place, home, and culture? What sorts of byzantine mental pathways need to be created, and discarded? What lessons can be drawn to my own life, in a city with unlimited access to information which itself suffers from the problem of “contested truths”, where the culture and traditions are perhaps just as strong but subsumed under the noise of a thousand other distractions? 

These brief moments where I was welcomed into the homes of strangers in a distant country to my own, and a totally different culture and language to my own, are by their nature distorted by my lens, like the atomic particles that defy exact position by the effect of their being observed. For generations photographers have studied “the other” through a distant gaze made for distant consumption, analyzing traditions like clothing, craft making, and religion as a single form of more complex societies, rather than another thread in a vast tapestry of experiences we all share and appreciate. Yet I hope something exists here which is common and relatable, something human and touching, confusing yet understandable. These spaces and places are constantly evolving, innately tied to a physical, mental, and spiritual location, a free floating target being constructed and dismantled at the same time. 

Wisdom Weavers is a video that is the result of the collaboration between Johnny Miller, Alex Kornhuber, Rowena Richie, and Maritza Pintado-Caipa. How does the ancient tradition of weaving relate to dementia? Our team, comprised of a videographer, a photographer, a dance artist and a neurologist, explored the connections between memory, brain health, culture and community. This video was realized with help from editor: Sarah Wells, music: Werd Pace, and translations: Justina Riquelme Rios and Lucio Illa Mesa.