Caught in Ambition
ROLE: Personal Work—Photographer, Videographer & Writer YEAR: 2025
In June, 2025, I travelled around six countries in Latin America for six months. This trip changed my entire understanding of the world, and ‘Caught in Ambition’ is 280 pages of words and images from this trip, attempting to capture the experiences, existential spirals and epiphanies that led to one final break through.
Collectively and individually, we moved through identity crises, and it lies in this work.
On time. In time. Ahead of time. The time of our lives, before we knew it. A one way ticket to Lima, Peru. What may seem an obscure destination to begin with was, exactly that, but this trip was full of many obscure choices so, reader, take a seat and enjoy the ride.
A cocktail of misery, mystery and excitement, shaken by bouts of turbulence entertained us for 25 hours of around-the-world enjoyment until eventually we landed on the tarmac in Lima. Heads high, hearts ready, backpacks...no where to be found. Patience wore thin and confusion quickly turned to alarm once we realised it wasn’t likely we were seeing the luggage containing our lives. Without any spare underwear or socks, we carried our sparse belongings out of the airport and into a bus that would take us to find Lima.
Empty handed, faces pressed against the window, we watched as the night’s darkness grew brighter and fluorescent colours of shop signs and street lights belonging to a city alive floated into view on the pavement below.
Lima felt strange. It was a big city dressed in fancy clothes and nice jewellery that belonged to someone else. When a place is cosplaying the rich, it normally doesn’t take long to see how poorly they’re doing it. At first you see the obvious signs; road rules without any sense, powerlines at head height, road crossings that require dominance, people stood in front of storefronts, market stalls, supermarket pop-up’s, are paid to coerce you into the shop they work for, try their product, buy their candy (a note on this further into the book).
At some point, the subtle hints of poverty and pain grow louder and become harder to ignore; Sharp high-rises neighbour demolition sites housing multiple families, luxury hotels are guarded by big metal gates covered in varying shades of graffiti and political slur, police usher homeless sleepers off park benches, out of the eyeshot of passing by tourists, hopeless children shake cups of coins at men in sleek black cars and business suits. Until eventually you journey into the city centre and find the line in the sand where mirage ends and reality exists unfiltered. Presenting a contrast as harsh and undeniable as land and see, city becomes slum. Rich borders poor, hiding in plain sight. A disguise designed in the name of preserving, or creating really, a name for Peru and covering up the parts that don’t suit the performance.
It unsettled us, to say the least. Albeit we ate breakfast burritos and eggs benedict, squirming around in our ignorance, feeling already the dynamic was ill-matched, but not knowing what to do about it. We completed our Spanish lessons, waited for our backpacks to find their way to us and boarded the first bus to Huaraz; city of hiking.
Located in the crevice of cascading mountain ranges, rolling hills and bright blue lagunas, we were happy to be out of the big city and into a place that felt like a more humble side of Peru.
Three gringos and minimal Spanish scowled streets full of colour and chaos in search of hidden treasures and camping supplies, preparing for our big journey off into the mountains. Several acclimatisation hikes later, a side of Guinea Pig for lunch, 3 butane gas burners, 2 rain ponchos, 1 almost entirely illegible topographic map of the Corderilla region and too many packets of noodles to keep count of, we packed up our things and made our way to Huayhuash.
A passage from my book, ‘Caught in Ambition’
"THERE’S A MOMENT BEFORE YOU SEE SOMETHING LEGENDARY WHERE YOU PREPARE FOR IT TO BE ANTI-CLIMATIC. BIG BEN OR THE MONA LISA JUST MIGHT NOT LIVE UP TO THE YEARS OF HYPE AND DOLLAR STORE CUSHIONS THAT HAVE LED TO FINALLY ENCOUNTERING ONE ANOTHER IN THE FLESH. FORTUNATELY FOR HIM, CHRIST THE REDEEMER PERFORMED. RECEPTIVE, GIVING & OPEN MINDED, HE WAS THE PERFECT PARTNER FOR THE OCCASION."A passage from my book, ‘Caught in Ambition’
Hungry for a snack and something to take our minds of walking, the pursuit to retrieve an avocado began. Leveraging sticks, rocks, climbing abilities and bigger sticks, the boys aimed at low hanging fruit without breaks, all of us salivating in the anticipation of our impending bite to eat. Each tree was barren in the areas above the path, already cleared out by the locals, who—we were soon to learn— were selling buckets full of them just around the bend. This meant the only remaining fruit was being held captive over the side of the cliff, or stood staring down at us from 10 feet above. Those were our targets, and with clear intent we (I say we but you know it wasn’t me) fired our shots until two had been retrieved from their perch, cracking down to the ground with an unforgiving velocity that saw hunter scramble to gather his treasure before it rolled off the side of the cliff.
Soft and decadent, sweetened by the effort that went into retrieving it. What is a moment of pleasure without foreplay first? Blood, sweat and tears invested before a moment of pause and then the ecstasy of completely unrestrained delight. Under the shade of our avocado tree, we delighted, sucking on the flesh and seed that was the fruit of our labours.
A passage from my book ‘Caught in Ambition’
