THE GLACIER AND ITS ANDEAN GUARDIANS: ÁNGELA PONCE IN NEW YORK

This Thursday, Guardians of the Glaciers, a photographic exhibition by Peruvian photojournalist and documentary photographer Ángela Ponce, curated by Jorge Villacorta, opened at the Instituto Cervantes in New York. The exhibition transports viewers to the summit of the Quelccaya glacier—formerly the largest tropical glacier in the world—through the perspective of Andean communities whose ancestral ways of life are threatened by its rapid melting.

At the foot of the Quelccaya glacier, located at 5,000 meters above sea level in Cusco, Peru, lives a Quechua community of approximately 130 households that has inhabited the region for generations. Although Quelccaya is the main source of water for the region—including the Machu Picchu hydroelectric plant—those who live there lack basic services such as running water and electricity. Agriculture is also nearly impossible in this extreme climate, so the community relies on the herding of camelids, which graze on the hardy grasses and provide leather and wool for clothing and handicrafts.

Ice is the planet’s second-largest source of fresh water, and Peru is home to 70 percent of the world’s tropical glaciers. However, the Quelccaya glacier is retreating by nearly 60 meters per year, and it is projected to disappear within the next three decades if global emissions are not drastically reduced. At this pace of melting, life here becomes increasingly precarious. Its inhabitants struggle to sustain their existence and traditions as their source of life fades away.

Guardians of the Glaciers celebrates the sublime—and increasingly fragile—beauty of Quelccaya, while also revealing the lived realities of climate change. Local communities know that future generations may never see the glacier of their ancestors, and that its melting, intensified by black carbon, threatens life in the region. In the Andean worldview, the relationship between the planet and human beings mirrors that of parent and child: the Apu (mountain) is an elderly relative worthy of respect, a living being capable of dispensing punishment and intervening in human destiny. Through Ponce’s striking photographs, the raw force of nature intertwines with intimate moments of community.

Ángela Ponce (Peru, 1994) is a documentary photographer and photojournalist who addresses social and climate issues within the Latin American context. She is a Pulitzer Center grantee and a regular contributor to The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Reuters. Her photographs have also been published in the Los Angeles Times, Geo Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, BBC, Die Zeit, The Guardian, NPR, El País, among others.

*Cover image: For herders, the ‘Apu,’ mountain in Quechua, possesses a spirit that can intervene like a god in the lives of human beings, punish, and alter destinies. In the Andean worldview, the naturehuman connection is akin to that between parent and child. The villagers not only see the snowy mountain as an element of nature, but also as an older relative worthy of care and respect.