I myself have no car. 

But I have friends who have cars.

Whenever I am underway with them in their cars, it is very possible that we end in a garage…

…one of the thousands and thousands of garages that line up alongside the avenues and highways of Lima,

exhibiting their oily black facades and driveways, decorated with motor and oil and tire advertisements, casks, and piles of wires.

Inside they are mostly a huge mess, or what seems to the non-mechanic eye a mess.

A smeary mess of wrecked cars, auto parts and tools, cans and boxes, where every spot and crack, from the office over the workshop up to the toilet is stained with oil and smells of oil.

The garages are mostly run by empiric mechanics that have learned their skills from their fathers, uncles, brothers or cousins and sometimes do true miracles and sometimes, too, manage to ruin your car completely.

I have always had a fascination for these messy, dingy, greasy spectacles offered by the garages across the country… And while waiting for my friend’s car to get repaired, I happily make my way through the disarray with my camera…

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Claudia Lüthi is an amateur photographer living in Lima, Peru. View more of Claudia’s work on JPG Magazine in el lente de la coneja or on aamora.