A father and son commune with their ancestors in an Andean ghost village: Víctor Zea Díaz’s best photograph

The population of Miraflores, which is in Peru’s Nor Yauyos-Cochas Landscape Reserve, has been shrinking as its younger inhabitants leave to start new lives in the nearby capital, Lima. In some ways, this mirrors the town’s founding more than a century ago, when its initial inhabitants moved there from another settlement called Huaquis – now a ghost town.

I have travelled in many Andean communities where people don’t have access to water. Within the next 70 years, we will no longer have glaciers, and their disappearance, combined with a drop in rainfall, has had an impact on agriculture in Miraflores. The people’s ancestors in Huaquis made use of lagoons, dams, dykes and canals dating back to the pre-Hispanic period, which the people of Miraflores are learning to restore and revive. I feel like while maybe we are not winning this big war, we are still winning some important battles, and Miraflores is an example of that. By embracing the ancient technology of their ancestors, the people there still have water.

Last year, Spanish photographer Diego López Calvin and I completed a project called The Legacy of the Stone, portraying the relationship between the Miraflores community and their ancestral territory. We used two main approaches. The traditional water infrastructure was developed by people who knew about astronomy, which was an aspect I wanted to capture. Diego and I placed more than 40 pinhole cameras around the landscape and its monuments, which recorded the path of the sun through the sky, sometimes over a period of six months, as part of a process called solarigraphy. I thought of the cameras, which were made of tin cans, as eyes in the stones.

I also wanted to create a series of family portraits, covering the different generations who have absorbed this ancient knowledge, and it felt important that some of those should be taken in Huaquis. I heard that two families were going up to the abandoned town to find their ancestral homes, so I joined them. It was a very emotional day, with people setting out like Indiana Jones but ending up in tears when they reached the tumbledown buildings they were looking for.

They reminded me of my relationship with my father. He never forgot where he came from and he took me back there

This picture is of a man called Nelson Vílchez and his son Moisés, and it shows a very precious moment, where two generations reconnected with their roots. The ruined building was once the home of Nelson’s grandparents. Behind them, a steep cliff falls away to the Cañete River. It’s a contemplative picture: Nelson is holding his son and they are not looking at the camera. In fact, they are looking towards the sun, which connects this image with those that use solarigraphy.

The two of them reminded me of my relationship with my own father, who moved from the Andes to Lima to work and provide opportunities for his family. He never forgot where he came from and he took me back there as a kid, just as Nelson did with his son. Here, you can see the love between the two generations: they look as if they are one person.

It felt very important to exhibit photographs from this project in Miraflores before they were shown anywhere else. The premiere coincided with the annual water festival, during which San Pedro, patron saint of the spring, is worshipped and there is traditional song and dance. Younger people who have moved away from Miraflores come back to be a part of it all; the exhibition provided an opportunity for the different generations to bond.

I heard people talking about older members of the community, and saying how important they were, how they’d taught and maintained traditional practices, and I was delighted the photographs had helped provoke that recognition. Sometimes, seeing your community through the eyes of someone from outside helps remind you of what makes it unique.

When I worked as a photojournalist, it could be frustrating to build trust in a community, spend a week doing reportage and then just disappear. Though the project is over now, I’m certain I’ll work with the people of Miraflores again. I made friends there, I feel bonded.

V íctor Zea Díaz’s CV

Born: 1989, Lima, Peru
Trained: Business administration at University of Lima; Master’s in documentary photography at Centro de la Imagen, Lima
Influences: “My father and mother, who taught me to love and to respect where I came from. Juan Michilerio, Musuk Nolte, Sharon Castellanos, Fernando Criollo, Prin Rodriguez and other local artists. The hip-hop community, artist collectives and neighbourhood organisations with deep commitment to their sociopolitical context, are also a great inspiration. And, recently, a big influence and a mentor has been photographer Diego López Calvin”
High point: “Now – because several projects that we have developed in recent years are giving birth and the fruits are being harvested”
Low point: “I don’t feel that I have had very low moments, but the beginning was very challenging, and even when one is working, one encounters job insecurity, the lack of work, and this definitely influences your confidence”
Top tip: “Believe and trust in your personal stories, in the stories of your communities, which are global stories. Don’t get discouraged if things don’t go well the first time. These processes are very long and make sense as the years go by, it is OK to make mistakes. It is very important to ask ourselves: who do we work for? And why do we do these projects? It helps us reaffirm our foundations, and be a little clearer about what our objective is as an individual and as a community”

• Víctor Zea Díaz’s project is part of Heritage in Focus, a collaboration between the World Monuments Fund and Magnum Foundation documenting cultural heritage sites from the 2022 World Monuments Watch . His project also features in a dedicated Google Arts & Culture exhibit