[Untitled]

Southern Peruvian Railway

This Photograph by Ricardo Villalba depicts the Peruvian Southern Railway. This railroad is the most extensive of all the railroads built and still circulating in Peru. The construction of these on other railways in Peru was interrupted during the War of the Pacific (1879-1883), in which Chile defeated Peru and Bolivia. The image is taken somewhere between the port of Mollendo in the Pacific Coast of Peru and Puno and presumably during or right after construction. The location is a mountaintop that the tracks and locomotive are cutting through. The mountain has been excavated in order for the rails to be laid. The locomotive doesn’t seem to be moving as there is no smoke coming from the chimney. The composition of the photograph seems to reveal that the photographer and camera are positioned on the tracks which further indicates that the locomotive is immobile and the railway is in a state of construction. It appears that there are approximately eight workers on a rock shelf roughly halfway from the railway to the top of the mountain. The small figures serve to give significance to the scale of the mountain, the locomotive, and the amount of work it must have taken to excavate the mountain pass. The main focus of the composition seems to be the v-shaped path cut through the mountain. This focus on the Landscape could be a criticism of the way in which natural resources were being exploited. The South Peruvian Railway was built as part of the nineteenth century modernizing projects undertaken by many nation-states in Latin America, but it also connected and expanded a legacy of the colonial past, as well as facilitating exportation of goods and services and the development of agriculture. Villalba was born in Bolivia and his intention in depicting the railway could make a critique about the exploitation of the land and resources, and also the lives of those working on the railway.

Ricardo Villalba

https://losgrandesfotografos.blogspot.com/2018/01/ricardo-villalba-activo-1860-1880.html

Photograph