Trimmings

Sacsayhuaman, Peru, 2003

THE BOTTOM OF AN INCA WALL, snapped while I loaded film into my new Canon EOS Elan 7 on the third day of a press junket to Peru. These stones were put in place when Europe was building cathedrals, but the Inca empire was neolithic, so it feels so much older.

This was taken at Sacsayhuaman (or Saksaywaman, depending on what you're reading.) I'd already been to Lima, Cuzco and Macchu Picchu by the time I was taken to see these massive walls. They're wildly impressive - most Inca ruins are - but are only a remnant of what was once here - all but the heaviest stones were carted off to nearby Cuzco to help build the new Spanish colonial centre.

I'll eventually get around to scanning the photos I took on this trip, but they come at the end of my twenty years of pre-digital photography, at the foot of the analog wall which, in my mind at least, is still almost as solid as these Inca stones.