Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Martín Chambi

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.