Stiedl, 2010

John Cohen

Hardcover, 284 pages

11.7 x 2.9 x 13.2 inches

From Steidl:

Past Present Peru combines photographs, textiles, music and film in an ambitious book object. The photographs are for Cohen a “fragmented collection of visual insights, a record of deepening awareness” that depicts the diversity of Peruvian life including religious festivals, potato farming, and the recent introduction of hydroelectricity. The textiles, reproduced in luscious colour, embody pre-Columbian craft traditions more than 5,000 years old. Cohen began recording music in Peru in 1964, using a portable tape recorder to capture performances wherever he could: at festivals, in villagers’ homes, even waiting at a bus stop. Cohen’s films are about “a sense of things that weren’t expressed in words”, and are themselves a unique historical record.

The unifying thread between the different media of Past Present Peru is Cohen’s own writing – anecdotal, precise, historically informed – words that capture the past and present of Peru, and anticipate its future.