ILLA

Sergio Urday

Illa (Island) is a photographic project carried out in the department of Cusco, a place with a lively, untamed culture and a particular archaeological wealth, where the photographer discovered, in a small steppe, a large number of stones of different sizes, all finely carved and, according to legend, Inca stones. According to the myth, the stones were brought from these regions to continue building the city of Cusco.

In the pre-Columbian world, as in many other cultures at the same stage of cultural development, the relationship between land, beliefs and life was extremely interdependent. Among many other reasons, subsistence depended on the fruits of the land, so everything that belonged to it acquired a mythical/religious symbolism. It is this symbolic space that captures Urday’s interest in archaeological remains, and through his camera and on-the-ground experience he tries to recreate this past.