It’s easy to be a brilliant photographer in Bolivia as the scenery is amazing, with dazzling white salt flats, red lagoons peppered with pink flamingoes and the snowy Andes as a backdrop. The people are just as spectacular — tiny women in bright ponchos and bowler hats, with faces like dark, grooved wood after years in the high-altitude sun. There were women selling furry llama foetuses in the witches’ market. And men crouched over cleaning shoes behind face masks — not to avoid the dust, but because it’s considered a lowly trade and they want to hide their shame. Bolivia felt like the rawest, most undiluted country in Latin America. Spanish conquistadors overran the region in the 1540s, leaving it with the Spanish language and Catholicism. But that’s just a veneer over the strong indigenous Aymara and Quechua cultures that were never quashed. Ancient beliefs are ever present below a semi-modern façade, with a lax attitude to the rules and a heady sense of wildness and witchcraft sw...
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