In this text, Rodrigo Quijano argues that Lima 01—a series of photographs of inverted images of interiors of old abandoned buildings in downtown Lima—addresses questions of forgetting and urban decay. The series makes reference to the design of the city of Lima: its initial grid layout, drawn in the sixteenth century; the major attempt at renovation and modernization in the late nineteenth century in a project modeled on Baron Haussmann’s renovation of Paris; and more recent chaotic growth. The colonial model delimited a center of social and ethnic exclusion that lives on in the present. The buildings included in Gruenberg and Hare’s series were constructed after World War II, a period of relative commercial prosperity that altered Lima’s colonial layout. The luxurious buildings constructed during that period were abandoned at the end of the twentieth century, a period that witnessed massive urban growth and social conflicts resulting from migration from the country to the city. In Gruenberg and Hare’s photographs, Quijano asserts, the image of the city makes itself felt, if fleetingly, on the walls of the closed dark buildings; inverted images of the outside world suggest abandonment as well as the possibility of a different spatial arrangement. Quijano even asserts that Lima 01 formulates a reflection on photographic practice itself, divided as it is between the real and the illusory. The pinhole camera’s inverted image “is a basic physical register that has not been altered,” whereas the positive image rendered by the technological process is what produces the effect of reality.

This text by Rodrigo Quijano, a poet and literary and art critic, on the Lima 01 project by Peruvian photographers Philippe Gruenberg and Pablo Hare was published in the catalogue to the exhibition of the same name. 

After studying economics and philosophy at the London School of Economics and Political Science, Philippe Gruenberg took classes in photography at the Saint Gervais Institute in Geneva, Switzerland and at the Instituto Gaudí (currently the Centro de la Imagen) in Lima. Since 1998, he has taken part in group shows in Peru and abroad; the first solo show of his work was held in 2002. In 2008, he participated in RIIA–Residencia Internacional de Artistas en Argentina.

After studying audiovisual communication at the Universidad de Lima, Pablo Hare studied photography at the Instituto Gaudí (currently the Centro de la Imagen) and cinematography at the Escuela Internacional de Cine y TV de San Antonio de los Baños, Cuba. In 2000, he was granted a fellowship by the Kunsthochschule für Medien [Academy of Media Arts] in Cologne, Germany, where he studied film. In 2005, he was an artist-in-residence at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. Since 1993, he has participated in group shows in Peru and abroad. His first solo show, Isla Grande, took place in 2000; the show La Ruta, featuring work by Hare and by Santiago Roose, was held in 2001. Gruenberg and Hare founded and directed the Galería del Escusado, active in Lima in 2002 and 2003; they were founding members of the Espacio La Culpable collective (2002–08), also based in Lima. The exhibition Lima 01, for which this text was written, was held in 2002, and Residencial San Felipe in 2003; both were curated by Rodrigo Quijano. Those projects revolve around the architecture of Lima as testimony to events and configurations of a social and political nature that leave their mark on architecture envisioned as structure and as space. 

In addition to producing and analyzing literature, Rodrigo Quijano, the author of this text, has been a critic and curator of contemporary Peruvian art since 1998.

Lima 01 was first exhibited at the Espacio La Culpable in 2002, and then at the XXV São Paulo Biennial. The exhibition catalogue contains English and Spanish versions of this text by Quijano and reproductions of twelve photographs. In his discussion, Quijano reads the works in relation to the social connotations of the changes in the city of Lima since the time of its founding in the sixteenth century and to the factors crucial to Peru’s socio-political life at the end of the twentieth century. The context for this work is the aftermath of the domestic armed conflict in Peru, primarily between the government and the Shining Path (that conflict lasted from 1980 to 1992, a critical moment in contemporary Peruvian history), and the repressive dictatorship that began in 1992 pursuant to a coup that brought Alberto Fujimori to power. Fujimori’s regime lasted until he was removed from office in the year 2000.