Rules For Fighting by Paola Jiménez

One day I googled my dad’s name and found an article which was titled “Bloody times: and uncontrollable wave of murders, kidnappings and robberies lashes Lima with more fury than El Niño himself”

In that article found a photograph of my father, he was covered in blood in the seat of his car. I recognized his shirt, I saw him dressed in that in some old photos.

My father was killed on February 4, 1998, a month before my 6th birthday, His name was Feliciano and he had a business in Gamarra, a very large commercial emporium in Lima, Peru. After several years, I started to investigate deeper into his murder. I had this urge to build a relationship with him, but I just couldn’t. In addition to talking with my family (who for many years failed to talk about the subject) and with close friends of the family, I searched my house for evidence of his existence or explanations of his sudden “disappearance”.

First, I found some objects my father had when he was murdered (a wallet, a handkerchief, a pen and a comb), which my mother kept a long time. Along with this, I found some police documents. Then I found a plastic bag full of undeveloped film rolls, videocassettes, and a notebook he had before he got married to my mother.

Finally, I manage to read his murder trial files, where I found even more information. I try to reconstruct this story to build my identity as I grow up. The murder of my father and the trauma that my family went through will always be with me, but while creating this, I was able to live a little the grief I could not manage to feel as a kid.

Paola Jiménez (1992) is a Peruvian photographer based in Lima, Peru. She started her studies in communications at the Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru (PUCP) and graduated in photography at Centro de la Imagen (Peru). She has taken workshops with Gonzalo Golpe, Laia Abril, Julieta Escardó, Ana Casas and Valentina Abenavoli. She was selected to the Residency Program of the ISSP 2018 (Latvia) and the RPS Photobook as Object 2019 (Japan) with Yumi Goto and Jan Rossel.

Her project “Rules for fighting” was shortlisted for the Cosmos PDF Award Hypercosmos 2019 and the PHmuseum Women Photographers Grant 2019, and was selected in the “Best of 2019” by Yumi Goto for the British Journal of Photography.