Sumbay Bridge. From the album of Views of the Southern Railway

During the nineteenth century, landscape photography was closely related to projects of industrial and commercial expansion. Needless to say, one of the most important activities of the photographer consisted in recording the great undertakings of the railway infrastructure, whose construction was made possible with the income from the guano trade. Around 1875, the photographer Ricardo Villaalba was commissioned to take a series of views of the railway that connected Arequipa with Puno. This is one of the emblematic photographs of that series. In the image of the train surmounting the Andean abysses, Villaalba appears to symbolize the triumph of technology over rugged nature.