It Never Rains in Lima, I Make My Own Rain

Abstract

Lima is a city where rain is like an elusive whisper, where humidity floods nearly everything without a single drop ever falling. In 2020, when the world came to a halt, I found myself trapped on the seventh floor of the Coloso de Tacna, the tallest building at the intersection of Tacna and Colmena in Lima’s Historic Center. That bustling, lively crossing had suddenly fallen silent. From the window, I observed the urban landscape, longing for the drizzles that once caressed my childhood. With the world closed off and my view restricted, I explored various techniques to photograph an imagined summer rain, one that only existed in my mind. This was a fabricated, fictional rain, much in line with Fontcuberta’s perspective that «every photograph is a fiction presented as truth» (1997, p. 15), and Baudrillard’s principle of simulation, which claims that a photographic image is, rather than representation, fiction (Damiano, 2014). So, I crafted a fictional rain, a fictional record, using water vapor and translucent surfaces to create ephemeral drops that slide slowly in front of the city. The light’s refraction in these drops multiplies Lima’s architecture, capturing the buildings in fleeting capsules, allowing the city to be seen through drops that gently trickle down.