photos

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urban

South America

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brick beauty & street art

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glimpse: EXPENSIVE POVERTY | What a sinister paradox: if you belong to the 35 % of Limeños, who live in the many shanty towns of Peru’s capital, you pay up to 10 times more for water than wealthier residents, according to Oxfam estimates. Abundant water, filling the pools of affluent Miraflores, is a scarce commodity in next door San Juan de Miraflores, where squatter settlements crawl up muddy hills. Without plumbing they depend on costly water truck deliveries, which don’t make it up the slopes. This means additional labor and costs for those living higher up. Despite an infamous perpetual winter drizzle, it almost never rains in Lima, which undermines rainwater harvesting efforts. And as though that wasn't bitterly ironic enough, the occasional rain comes down as torrential downpours, washing out these very hills and demolishing the brittle existences of those who dwell here.

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glimpse: DEATH BIRTHING LIFE | You are not gone. Because when you went, all of you stayed here. Peekaboo. You didn't need that white marble heaven after all, or an ending repackaged as eternity. You just changed once more, effortlessly.

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Escadaria Selarón, Rio de Janeiro / Brazil   colorful artwork with tiles by Chilean artist Selarón

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Medellin / Colombia   bricks crawling up the hills

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Medellin / Colombia   contemporary architecture

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Valparaíso / Chile   sheet metal facades - originally the sheet metal was used to secure freight in cargo ships arriving from Europe and what was practical then, looks artful now

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gallery

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related

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photos | essays

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The Street Around the Corner

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tripping over nothing in everyday streets

Not imposing any art on them or desperately extrapolating some moxie that isn’t there, I strip their description down to only one statement and this is final: these are streets. see more

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countries | South America | Chile

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Valparaíso / TV, Tsunami, Fire, Neruda and the Quintessence of Hills & Timing

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ups and downs: a poetic matter of perspective

Still, there was no denying that this little TV set was the unanimous center of attention right now with eight eyes between us fully devoted to it: an 8.2 earthquake off the Chilean Pacific coast was sending a Tsunami right our way and suddenly we felt a gust of appreciation for every meter our journey had led us up the raven hill. explore

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countries | South America | Brazil

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Rio de Janeiro / No Hard Feelings

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distinguishing between place and experience

...my harshest criticism towards many travelers and especially the ones armed with blogs – that they don’t distinguish between a place and their experience there... explore

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countries | South America | Chile

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Santiago de Chile / Outside the Fence with a Whisky Flask

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the morals of sneaking in and getting what you pay for

...naturally, Kant's principals are noble, intact, and upright, while mine dangled lazily between mischievous and preposterous. But, from a pragmatic point of view no harm was done and this factual utilitarian reality was more convenient for me that day... explore

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others

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more urban

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