The villagers of Patacancha, in the Peruvian highlands, carry bundles of Queñual trees on llamas and alpacas, for use in an ancient, recently resurrected practice: the ‘planting’ of water. The planted shrubs help water infiltration into the subsoil and combat increasingly prolonged dry seasons.
The shot was taken by Peruvian photographer and editor Musuk Nolte, who has been recognised with a number of international awards. In 2013 he founded KWY Ediciones, which is dedicated to publishing Latin American authors. ‘Photography is a tool to move between worlds’, he said, ‘an effort to account for social, environmental, and political processes that affect the communities where I live,’ as well as explore other, imaginative possibilities.
