Zileri began working as the first female photographer at
Caretas, the political magazine owned by her husband's family. In 1968, when the military government of
Juan Velasco Alvarado took control of the country, Enrique was exiled to Spain and Zileri took what jobs she could find to support the family. She worked as a substitute teacher and a translator, taking bridal photographs on the side. She also assisted in multiple functions to keep the magazine running during other upheavals, when they were forced to shut down or were exiled due to their pro-Democracy stance. She strongly influenced the artistic vision of the magazine. In 1994, Zileri held an exhibit of her works at
Centro Cultural General San Martín in Buenos Aires. Though she tried many times to sell her work, she found no market for her photographs. Instead, she published two books,
Soliloquios (1996) and
Dúos (2000), as companion pieces—one exploring solitude and the other intimate relationships. The images collected in
Soliloquios were taken in Buenos Aires,
SoHo, Manhattan, and in
Cairo, Egypt. Her photographs, often of children, depict a "unique sensitivity" to the human condition and the majority reflected the color and reality of the streets of Lima. Near the end of her career, she concentrated on portraiture. She preferred to use a
Leica camera without zoom or flash, but in her later photography, she sometimes used a digital camera, though she felt the process was not as artistic. Zileri died on 21 October 2011 in
Santiago de Surco, Lima, from complications of
asthma. Posthumously, exhibits of her work were held in
Colombia (2011), at the Fernando de Szyszlo Art Gallery at the Peruvian Embassy in Washington, D.C. (2011), the Art Gallery of New York City's
Cervantes Institute (2011), and in Lima's
Miraflores District (2012). ==Selected works==