Parallel cities is a collective exhibition that analyses the transformation of the urban landscape. With this in mind each one of the eight collaborating artists presents a project undertaken in a city different to that in which the artist currently resides. The proposal seeks to analyse the manner in which the photographer, as a visitor to the city, has represented determined socio-urban conditions that react to the very phenomenon of the growth of cities.

Observing from the viewpoint of a migrant, the urban environment liberates itself from the established and assumes a disconcerting perspective, full of unprecedented and valuable information. Photography then becomes a resource for urban history and the main protagonist of documenting the evolution of cities.

This outsider’s view is revealed in another viewpoint; that being photographical which discovers a panorama deprived of conventions and that conditions us to perceive the manner in which as individuals we inhabit our cities forgetting our recent history and ignoring the profound and rapid changes that are taking place. It seems that ironically only the photographer’s curiosity manages to activate local people’s capacity to recognise and be recognised in their own cities thereby giving them the opportunity to avail of a “borrowed view”.

Circumstances can change rapidly. Common testimony can be reformulated and assimilated aesthetics can take an unexpected turn. While the contemporaneity of photographic discourse lies in the possibility of breaking the triviality of everyday life and converting it into something exceptional.

Exhibition held at Alliance Francaise (Lima).