Diana Guerra uses a 19th century photographic process as a meditation on the impermanence of cultural memory.

“When it comes to crossing borders,” writes Diana Guerra, “there is a transformation process that goes beyond one’s identity, and rather involves new understandings of family and our homelands.” For Guerra, a NYC-based photographer whose family lives in Peru, identity dissolves into traces of family, the people who presently surround us, and the landscapes we leave behind.

Fleeting Under Light, her ongoing series of photographic anthrotypes memorializes her cultural identity as it shifts and fades. Within the process, – invented in 1842 by Mary Sommerville using photosensitive materials created from plants – Guerra uses Peruvian purple corn as traces of her heritage and cultural ephemera.

Beyond this technical process, Guerra’s photographs were taken in New York City where she now lives, and two regions of Peru: La Arena and Lima. These include a range of subjects, from pictures of family members, a self-portrait, and an unintentional homage to The Last Supper. Guerra's images are a visual memoir to diasporic impermanence, which she describes as “vapor that leaves the ground, or that never settles.”

We speak about her process, her history, and how it all weaves together.

Jon Feinstein in conversation with Diana Guerra