2013
Digital photography
The University City of the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos (UNMSM) was inaugurated in the 1960s, becoming the most recent campus of the oldest university in the Americas (founded in 1548).
Its territory reflects the economic, political and social cycles of Peru’s recent history. The planning of its architecture was conceived as part of a modernizing project in favour of education, but it soon became exposed to the country’s instability. During the 1970s, it was affected by institutional precariousness and neglect. In the 1980s, its classrooms became witnesses and sites of violence during the Internal Armed Conflict. From the 1990s onward, the university initiated an apparent process of infrastructural reorganization, attempting to recompose its public and academic identity.
Ciudad Universitaria [University City] analyzes, through photography, the external surfaces and architectural bodies where these layers of our history materialize, revealing a territory marked by academic life, the complex political conjunctures of Peru, and the passage of time.