Highland Street Market, Peru, 1960s

Archive & AtlasEstablished · MMXXIII

Highland Street Market, Peru, 1960s — Archive & Atlas

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Highland Street Market, Peru, 1960s — Archive & Atlas

Unattributed 1960–1969

AA-2026-D1CF8C

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Every flat surface in this Andean street has been converted into a shop, which is to say a blanket, a plank, or the ground itself, laid out with bottles, tin cans, and whatever else survived transport down from the hills. Nobody organized this into aisles because nobody needed to; the entire economy of the town fits into one narrow lane between two rows of adobe buildings, and everyone already knows where everything is.

The hats do the talking about who came from where. Flat-brimmed felt on the men, tall pale straw on a few others, each style a small geographic passport announcing a home village to anyone who bothered to read it, which in 1960s highland Peru was still most people. The photographer, notably, is the only person in the frame not carrying, selling, or inspecting anything, which is its own kind of confession.

Behind the rooftops the mountain does what mountains in this part of the world do best, which is sit there being older than every transaction happening beneath it. The market will pack up by afternoon, the goods will be gone, and the mountain will still be exactly where it was, unimpressed by the morning's commerce.

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