Self Portrait with Inca Ruins, 1943
Self Portrait in the studio, 1922
Demonstration, Plaza de Armas, Cuzco, 1931
Newlyweds, 1930
Cusqueña Family, 1927
Giant of Paruro (Juan de la Cruz Sihuane), 1925
Víctor Mendívil and the Giant of Paruro, 1925
Boxers in the Studio, 1938
Plaza de Armas, Cuzco, 1925
Martín Chambi was born into poverty in sourthern Peru in 1891, son of a Quechua-speaking peasant family. Through several miracles of ambition, talent, luck and hard work, he was running a successful studio business as a society photographer in Cuzco by the 1920s. When not in the studio documenting special occasions for the rich, Chambi photographed his neighbors and their surroundings. Some of these freelance pictures could later be sold from his studio as postcards. Most of Chambi's photos were taken before 1950, but only after his death in 1973 did his work begin to be noticed by the international fine-art photo world.