No place like home

An L.A.-based photographer finds a moving history in his mother’s birth country of Peru

by The Week team

August 31, 2015

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Michael Robinson Chavez

(Michael Robinson Chavez)Long before Chavez was making a living as a photographer, he took back-to-back trips to Peru, in 1988 and 1989. A colleague at the time encouraged Chavez to bring along a camera and document his time in the country."Then, I was just taking pictures of anything I saw, I was just learning," Chavez remembers.

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(Michael Robinson Chavez)

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(Michael Robinson Chavez)By the mid-1990s, Chavez was making an annual pilgrimage to Peru as a bona fide photographer — and creating a series of images that doubled as an especially personal escape."Peru has always been my favorite place because of my family connection," Chavez says. "But it was also a release from daily newspaper work. When I had a job at The Boston Globe, I was doing a lot of the daily grind stuff. I would take my vacation time, go down to Peru, and really explore, artistically, my potential."

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(Michael Robinson Chavez)

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(Michael Robinson Chavez)

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(Michael Robinson Chavez)Over the course of 10 years, Chavez has put together a picture of a changing country. His resulting photo book, Awaiting the Rain, speaks to Peru's progress out of civil war and into a more stable state."The country is so rich in minerals and resources and raw materials," Chavez says. "The '90s were this transition that came where [the people] were waiting to finally benefit from this amazing country that they live in."And indeed, Chavez's images, starkly black and white but bursting with life, show Peru's people in all their iterations, from Sunday churchgoers to dancing couples to run-down workers.

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(Michael Robinson Chavez)

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(Michael Robinson Chavez)

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(Michael Robinson Chavez)Now, Chavez is publishing another book of images from his time in Peru, out this fall.Looking back through the photographs he'd made during the project, Chavez realized there was even more to say. Much like Peru itself, the images are always speaking, always changing.