7/5/10

At 10am my photo assistants/bodyguards met me at the camera store owned by Fernando Yague. He is a Japanese Peruvian photographer who owns a professional photo retail business. He is the only person in the world I would allow touch my film. We did a trade of sorts; I brought him 4X5 negative sleeves in packs in exchange for my film development and contact sheets.

Then we headed off to El Augustino, a part of Lima across the river Rimac and into a neighborhood called La Nueva Caja de Agua, which means The New Carton of Water. There, Sandra, the owner of  small circus, and her performers, were taking down their circus tent. Monkeys were leashed to the goal posts of an adjacent earthen soccer field. The trained dog, Ponki, was hitched to a remaining tent pole. Within minutes of my arrival with Mauro and Francisco, a crown of school age children surrounded us, curious about what we were doing and telling us stories. They pointed out the dead goat which lay in the middle of the tent. I had seen the goat looking fine on Saturday and I asked what happened. The children pointed to an older performer from the circus and whispered that he poisoned the goat. When I asked another performer what happened to the goat, he became somewhat nervous and said that it must have eaten something bad. There was no doubt in my mind that the kids told me the truth. I almost always believe a kid over an adult.

The dog performed his dances for me with the children looking on.

I ended up giving a short class to the kids on loading and unloading a Hasselblad. They were fascinated and understood quickly how it worked.