Celebrating home, one frame at a time

WHEN I was 13, in 1981, I immigrated to the United States with my parents and sister from Peru. Since that time the Washington, D.C., area has been my home.

In many ways, I’ve lived a hybrid life based on values, traditions and experiences of two countries, which is nothing unusual for immigrants. But as I’ve gotten older, and the reality that I have lived in Washington for about three-fourths of my life has set in, I have become more nostalgic for Peru - family, food, friends, traditions.

Three years ago I embarked on a long-term project exploring my roots; in particular, I wanted to document daily life, festivals and traditions in Lake Titicaca, Puno, where my Italian greatgreat-grandfather immigrated to in the late 1800s. Like me, he was an immigrant and a photographer. He was also a writer and musician, and completely immersed in the life and culture of his adopted home, never returning to his native land.

By the time I was born,

In most ways Puno, in the Andean high plains with an altitude over 12,000 feet, could not be more different from Washington, yet both places represent home for me.

my family had long left Lake Titicaca, but that’s where many of the great stories I heard as a child came from. And as the folklore capital of Peru, it is also central to Peruvian identity.

Whereas Puno was a new land that meant a new identity for my great-great-grandfather, for me it is a land of inherited memories and part of my identity. Like my great-great-grandfather, I, too, have made my life in a new country. In most ways Puno, in the Andean high plains with an altitude over 12,000 feet, could not be more different from Washington, yet both places represent home for me. — WPBloomberg

(Clockwise from above left) During the Virgin of Candelaria Festival about 15,000 musicians will come into the small city to play and celebrate. This musicians were at the festival in Puno, Peru, in February 2015. • A bullfighter in Llachon, Peru, is...

Above left to right, a boy participates in a festival for Saint Anthony in Llachon, Peru. • This man rents small communities such as Llachon, Peru, fancy horses for their festivals. • A sack race during the the first Beach Day in shores of Lake...

Dancers perform at the patron saint festival in Llachon, Peru, in June 2013.

A fiesta in Llachon, a small rural community on the Capachica peninsula in Lake Titicaca, Peru. Here dancers celebrate the town’s patron saint, Saint Anthony of Padua, in June 2013.