To each their own hat, and for each headgear, a unique meaning. In Peru, and more broadly across the Andean highlands, choosing a hat is far from a simple fashion statement.
Indeed, every piece of headgear, in addition to its practical and decorative purposes, carries vital information about its wearer. A hat can reveal the social or marital status of the person beneath it, while ethnic identity remains instantly recognizable through specific shapes, colors, and materials.
Today it is particularly hot. The air is dry and it hasn’t rained for months, yet you are crossing the vast desert. Your goal is the mountain on the far side. There lives Kon, the servant god who carries messages from the Earth to the Heavens. In exchange for the offering you bring, he might deliver your plea: a desperate request for the celestial gods to bring rain once more to your village’s crops.
To find your way to the mountain, you follow strange paths etched into the ground. These paths have never been seen in their entirety by human eyes. To do so, one would need to fly like a condor—but that gift, like these drawings, is reserved for celestial birds and the gods.