Foto Féminas: How did your project, Periferias (Outskirts), come about?

Lorena Marchetti: Since 2011 I started working on a series that explores all kinds of outskirts and Latin American landscapes. I have always dedicated myself to the recording of urban spaces and cities. However in 2011 the inspiration that gave rise to these series, which includes what I call ‘Cosmovisión Latina’, were landscapes viewed from a position of high altitude. Also the focus and exaggeration of such particular chromatic palettes are specific to each context. Everything spreads and stretches out at high altitude: from the flight of a bird, to the travelling painter or an incidental tourist. Back in 2011 I was documenting images in much greater detail; once zoomed in, many more small, subtle and private worlds reveal themselves.

FF: What do you look to explore in your photographic projects?

LM: In this instance they are records of the city of Lima and its outskirts in Peru. The point of view the shots were taken from was from a high altitude, with its saturation of colours, forms and idioms. The territories vary in function regarding their different authors and actors, such as their political and social geography and their habitats and cultural uses. They can feature numerous constructions and superimposed blocks to dense areas saturated with wild vegetation, absent from human presence, the natural transported to the megalopolis, inhabited landscapes which indicate no presence of life in their boarders. I often use a chromatic palette, which on paper plays with the saturation and the exaggeration of its colours, therefore achieving its close connection to painting and moving away from the photographic documental record. These extremes diffuse; metadata and intuitive maps go on to make up a specific framework of urban experiences, reflexions concerning space, context and culture.

FF: What inspires you about Latin America?

LM: In this particular case it’s Lima; its geography is divided between coast and desert. It has a very specific climate with persistent cloud cover. Exaggerating that permanent cloudy sky, I recorded these city landscapes where their demographic chaos, urban organization and discord stretch all the way out to the desert coastal rocks on the outskirts, and from this, generating new daily urban situations and neon landscapes that invite new reflections.

Each one of these popular neighbourhoods or new neighbourhoods can be best described as corals that make up a reef, which rise out of nothing and become epicentres and informal settlements that go on shaping the mosaic of the city creating new landscapes very much their own. From the chromatic, sandy and rocky palette of contrasting range, they make Lima a very individual and specific type of city.

This series is part of a larger body of work that I have been making within Latin American cities.

To see more of Lorena Marchetti’s work, here.