Rules for fighting

Paola Jiménez Quispe
Rules for fighting

Photographs: Paola Jiménez Quispe

Publisher: Witty Books & Images Vevey

232 pages

Year: 2022

ISBN: 979-12-80177-15-5

Comments: Softcover, sewn binding, 20,5 x 15 cm, with a signed print (It will be selected at random at the time of shipping) and a leaflet of 'Rules for fighting'. Design by Paola Jiménez Quispe. Frist edition of 500 copies. Out of print.

In February 1998 a businessman was murdered in Lima, Peru, it used to happen normally in different capitals of Latin America. He was an entrepreneur and he had a successful fabric business. I was 5 years old when this happened and he was my father. My family was really shocked and they didn't talked about the issue, so I grew up questioning lots of stuff about him and what happened and also having an urge to built a relationship with him. Besides talking with my family (who couldn’t really talk about it) and close family friends, I searched in my house for evidence about his existence or explanations of him suddenly disappearing.

First, I found some objects my father had when he was murdered that my mother kept, with this I found a police document, I learnt about why he was murdered, how, where and what “exactly” happened. Then I found a plastic bag full of undeveloped film rolls, my mother told me my father used to make tons of photographs, I developed them and found 706 images. I googled his name and I found a tiny press picture of his murder, I looked for it in the newspaper archive and I found it but bigger. I found videotapes he made about a trip my family did before I was born, and I finally found one notebook he wrote before he got married to my mother, he writes about marriage, relationships and love.

This project im working on is not only a journey of me trying to communicate with him through all these years. Is about how memory could work, how we try to remember and/or forget, sudden loss and death.