Lucero Del Castillo Ames: The Union Club / El Club de la Union

The Union Club / El Club de la Union

The series The Union Club is set in one of Lima's oldest private social clubs. Founded in 1868 by members of the Peruvian elite and located in Lima’s Plaza Mayor—a site central to key episodes in Peru’s Colonial and Republican eras—the Union Club emerged during a 19th-century trend of gentleman’s clubs inspired by British models. Initially, such clubs served as meeting places for foreign businessmen, but in the case of the Union Club, it became a gathering space for men who fought in the 19th-century war between Bolivia, Chile, and Peru, and later played prominent roles in shaping Peru’s political landscape. 

Although the Club has undergone significant changes, including the admission of women in 1982, much of its architecture and decor remain steeped in a vision of Peru where men were the primary—if not exclusive—participants in democratic society. By capturing the Club’s interiors in black-and-white photography, Lucero sheds light on the pomp and solemnity of symbols of masculine power, such as the bar, the pool tables, and the podium. Her work reveals a haunting sense of stasis, where the ghosts of traditional gendered roles persist and continue to define these spaces.  

By mirroring and exposing the patriarchal foundations of the Peruvian club, The Union Club invites viewers to critically examine their own affiliations and complicities in upholding traditional masculinity. It challenges them to question how the spaces and institutions that they engage with, may perpetuate the power structures rooted in exclusion and dominance.