Mountain fields like stairways of stone

The book Mountain fields like stairs of stone by Thomas Locke Hobbs is a self-published work that brings together a series of large-format photographs taken in the mountains of the Peruvian Andes. Some of them are contemplative and seem to record the ancient ruins of planting terraces, while others show the great Peruvian metropolises as a tentacular presence that expands through the Andes, taking over the hills and valleys.

As the photographer himself says: “even though, thousands of years ago, the inhabitants of the mountain valleys of the Andes transformed the landscape by building terraces to convert marginal lands into productive places. The population grew and the surplus of these crops was the base of the exchange of the Inca and Wari empires. At present these rural spaces have been uninhabited by the phenomenon of migration from the fields to the cities. Small capitals have become metropolises. The urban constructions spread over the mountains”.