Shipibo-Konibo: Portraits of my blood
In the 1990s, a strong migration began from the Shipibo-Konibo communities towards the city of Pucallpa in Ucayali, forming human settlements in the district of Yarinacocha, inhabited by families that maintained ties with their communities of origin.
This photographic project is a tribute to David Díaz Gonzales' ancestors and a portrait of the Shipibo-Konibo people of many years ago. Beyond being a mere work or anthropological investigation, these portraits coagulate into a family album where the intimacy of the photographer as an artist can be observed.
The images evoke nostalgia for the irreplaceable, bringing with them ghosts of people he never got to know, bt who deserve to be remembered. In this commemoration, he shows how ancestral customs have disappeared today, since the arrival of the Jesuits and Christianity, and how peoples withdrawn from their communities now live marginally on the periphery of human settlements.
Each black and white portrait is also a tribute to the pioneers of photography who, with their gaze, inspired us to capture the reality of a people that mutates, that changes constantly in the face of a society that ignores them and lives with its back to them.
Pucallpa, Ucayali-Perú 2018
Shipibo-Konibo Shaman that currently resides in the city of Pucallpa. Yarinacocha, Ucayali-Perú 2020.
We at Xapiri Ground are proud to debut the contemporary works of David Díaz Gonzales; an indigenous Shipibo photographer who will be exhibiting for the first time his photographs in Perú.
Biography | David Díaz Gonzales
David Díaz Gonzáles is a Peruvian freelance photographer, from the native community Nuevo Saposoa, located in the province of Coronel Portillo, Ucayali region, belonging to the Shipibo-Konibo indigenous people. He currently lives in the city of Pucallpa.
He utilizes photography as a memory tool for the Shipibo-Konibo people. For him it is very important to preserve who they are through images; a material that will remain for the Shipibo-Konibo people and Perú forever. In this time of cultural transition, the artist assumes his responsibility to document these daily life, problems, and changes of his people, through the genuine voice of his photography.
In 2021, Díaz was an AMAZON RJF GRANTEE for the Pulitzer Center for his investigative photo journalism on the deforestation of the Mennonite colony in the communities of Masisea in Ucayali, and won first place for photography in the Maravillarte Competition in Perú. He currently works as a photojournalist for Ojo Publico Perú.
