That morning, I set out to visit the Inca site of Sacsayhuamán, above Cusco. First day. Nine o'clock. The slightly naive enthusiasm of someone who thinks he knows what he came looking for.
That morning, I set out to visit the Inca site of Sacsayhuamán, above Cusco. First day. Nine o'clock. The slightly naive enthusiasm of someone who thinks he knows what he came looking for.
Arriving at the site, there are too many people. Too much noise. I leave the main path without knowing where it leads. I only needed silence, a wish to meditate.
In the distance, a shepherdess and her sheep make their way up the path. I take position on the roadside, camera raised. The scene drags on. So I watch.
The sheep look at me, the dogs bark without really knowing what to make of me. The old shepherdess struggles to keep up with the pace of her flock. A suspended moment. In that instant, I am no longer visiting a country. I am simply inhabiting a world that is not my own.
Everything can be seen. But seeing and looking — are they really the same thing?
You know that kind of moment? The one where you do nothing, and everything unfolds before you, like a theatre scene almost too well orchestrated to be chance?
While I was contemplating the scene, a man emerged from behind a sheet-metal gate that barely stood upright. He greets the shepherdess, looks at me, then approaches.
His name is Pedrito. He sells Tumi, those Peruvian ceremonial knives. I buy one to keep a trace of this encounter. Then, in shaky Spanish, I throw him a « ¿meditación? », making circles with my hand to ask him to point me to a quiet place nearby.
He smiles. His gaze changes. Without a word, he gently takes me by the arm and invites me to follow him behind the gate. It is not a garden. It is his sanctuary. Pedrito is a Hijo del Sol. A curandero. What we call, in the West, a shaman.
He then prepares to guide the meditation. I take a few shots, then he settles me like a child, miming every gesture. I take off my shoes, then he asks me to hold volcanic stones against me: one under the feet, one on the belly, one on the heart. An hour passes. Then I stand up.
45 minutes later, he asks me to come closer to his altar, where he gathers the offerings. To take off my t-shirt. Then my trousers. I comply. And in a fraction of a second, there I am, naked in this garden, while he pours two vessels of sacred water over me.
In truth, I had sought none of this. I had gone to see what everyone comes to see: a sacred place. I met a sacred man.
The portrait I exhibited in Cusco, Hijo del Sol, comes from that morning. I took it while he was preparing to guide our meditation.
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