Martin Chambi, Peregrino en Qoillor ritti, Ocongate, Cusco
Martin Chambi
1891-1973
Quechua
Date
1935
Medium Specific
Photograph
Classification
Photograph
Dimensions
13 x 14 in. (33 x 35.6 cm)
Accession Number
2006.20.10.08
Credit
Gift of the Martin Chambi Family Archives
Biography
Martín Chambi has a peasant origin, he comes from the Peruvian Andes, from a town called Coaza, Carabaya district near Lake Titikaka in the department of Puno. Born on November 5, 1891.
After his first contact with photography in the gold mine where his father worked, the Santo Domingo Mining Company, he traveled to Arequipa where he learned the trade from his teacher and guide Don Max T. Vargas, after learning and practicing in the workshops. of the Flower Portal of the Plaza de Armas, ends his stay in Arequipa exposing, thanks to the sponsorship of his teacher at the Artistic Center of that city on October 12, 1917.
In the following months he traveled accompanied by his wife Manuela López Visa and his children Celia and Víctor to the city of Sicuani where he installed his own and first Study and workshop. Sicuani, capital of the Canchis province, is a prosperous place at that time due to the development in the exploitation of alpaca and llama wool and its textile industrialization; During his stay there, his only daughter, photographer Julia Chambi, was born.
He established himself professionally and then decided to move to Cusco, a city he arrived in 1920 attracted by its splendor and history, it is in this city that he carries out his most important and dazzling work until his death. It is also here where her children Angélica, Manuel and Mery are born and it is from Cusco that she achieves a national and international dimension for her work.
In life and in person, he exhibits in various rooms and galleries in Lima and Arequipa, he also shows his works in La Paz, Bolivia in 1925 and in Santiago de Chile in 1936.
It is interesting to mention his time as a photojournalist, for the Peruvian newspaper La Crónica and the Variedades and Mundial magazines and finally for La Nación in Buenos Aires during the years from 1918 to 1930. He also published his photographic work in the North American magazine National Geographic in February from 1938.
Martín Chambi reveals the daily and magical universe of Andean culture, giving the world its most intimate secret, through his photographic archive containing nearly 30,000 negatives, among glass plates, which have various formats: from the largest of 18 x 24 cm. going through those of 13 x 18 cm., 10 x 15 cm; even the smallest of 9 x 12 cm. and flexible films, rolls of 120 and 35 mm. material that is in perfect condition in the city of Cusco.
The archive happily relies on the protection and care of his heirs, especially his daughter Julia, sadly deceased in 2003, whom he leaves his Archive on his deathbed on September 13, 1973, confessing that he gives her a mine which she will know how to explode.
Rediscovering the work of Martín Chambi in each gaze, dimensioning it in the context of the photographic language, is like for an archaeologist to decipher the mysteries of the Lord of Sipán or the archaeological complex of El Brujo. Martín Chambi is the first indigenous blood photographer to portray his own people with haughtiness and dignity. His portraits recall those that August Sander recorded in Germany in the same period, 1930s, curiously also the son of a miner and dazzled by the photograph that a visitor brought to his town.
But if those portrayed by Sander look abominable in the harshness of their faces that announce the dementia of nearby Nazism, the faces photographed by Martín Chambi reflect the dignity of a refugee people in itself, uncomfortable in the imposed clothing, subdued, but never humiliated .
An important event occurs in 1977, the American photographer and anthropologist Edward Ranney, together with Víctor Chambi, manages the coming from the United States of a group of cooperators from the Earth Watch foundation, who catalog and posit about 6,000 glass plates. The contribution is really valuable, since it is from there that the photographic work is disseminated internationally, reaching the MOMA in New York in 1979.
Martín Chambi's work becomes more significant as the study of it extends and deepens in many parts of the world. To its intrinsic value, the beneficial effects that its presence causes in the societies in which it is shown are added.
Various institutions and characters have been interested in researching his work, and many celebrities have written about it. Hundreds of texts, articles, and catalogs have been published. More than a hundred exhibitions have been presented on his work from that of the Artistic Center of Arequipa and touring the world until our initial days of the third millennium.
A very high technical level, a masterful handling of light and an exceptional look characterize this classic creator and photographer who could well be called one of the MOST UNIVERSAL PERUVIANS OF THE 20TH CENTURY
(http://martinchambi.org/en/bio/,2020 translated from Spanish to English)
After his first contact with photography in the gold mine where his father worked, the Santo Domingo Mining Company, he traveled to Arequipa where he learned the trade from his teacher and guide Don Max T. Vargas, after learning and practicing in the workshops. of the Flower Portal of the Plaza de Armas, ends his stay in Arequipa exposing, thanks to the sponsorship of his teacher at the Artistic Center of that city on October 12, 1917.
In the following months he traveled accompanied by his wife Manuela López Visa and his children Celia and Víctor to the city of Sicuani where he installed his own and first Study and workshop. Sicuani, capital of the Canchis province, is a prosperous place at that time due to the development in the exploitation of alpaca and llama wool and its textile industrialization; During his stay there, his only daughter, photographer Julia Chambi, was born.
He established himself professionally and then decided to move to Cusco, a city he arrived in 1920 attracted by its splendor and history, it is in this city that he carries out his most important and dazzling work until his death. It is also here where her children Angélica, Manuel and Mery are born and it is from Cusco that she achieves a national and international dimension for her work.
In life and in person, he exhibits in various rooms and galleries in Lima and Arequipa, he also shows his works in La Paz, Bolivia in 1925 and in Santiago de Chile in 1936.
It is interesting to mention his time as a photojournalist, for the Peruvian newspaper La Crónica and the Variedades and Mundial magazines and finally for La Nación in Buenos Aires during the years from 1918 to 1930. He also published his photographic work in the North American magazine National Geographic in February from 1938.
Martín Chambi reveals the daily and magical universe of Andean culture, giving the world its most intimate secret, through his photographic archive containing nearly 30,000 negatives, among glass plates, which have various formats: from the largest of 18 x 24 cm. going through those of 13 x 18 cm., 10 x 15 cm; even the smallest of 9 x 12 cm. and flexible films, rolls of 120 and 35 mm. material that is in perfect condition in the city of Cusco.
The archive happily relies on the protection and care of his heirs, especially his daughter Julia, sadly deceased in 2003, whom he leaves his Archive on his deathbed on September 13, 1973, confessing that he gives her a mine which she will know how to explode.
Rediscovering the work of Martín Chambi in each gaze, dimensioning it in the context of the photographic language, is like for an archaeologist to decipher the mysteries of the Lord of Sipán or the archaeological complex of El Brujo. Martín Chambi is the first indigenous blood photographer to portray his own people with haughtiness and dignity. His portraits recall those that August Sander recorded in Germany in the same period, 1930s, curiously also the son of a miner and dazzled by the photograph that a visitor brought to his town.
But if those portrayed by Sander look abominable in the harshness of their faces that announce the dementia of nearby Nazism, the faces photographed by Martín Chambi reflect the dignity of a refugee people in itself, uncomfortable in the imposed clothing, subdued, but never humiliated .
An important event occurs in 1977, the American photographer and anthropologist Edward Ranney, together with Víctor Chambi, manages the coming from the United States of a group of cooperators from the Earth Watch foundation, who catalog and posit about 6,000 glass plates. The contribution is really valuable, since it is from there that the photographic work is disseminated internationally, reaching the MOMA in New York in 1979.
Martín Chambi's work becomes more significant as the study of it extends and deepens in many parts of the world. To its intrinsic value, the beneficial effects that its presence causes in the societies in which it is shown are added.
Various institutions and characters have been interested in researching his work, and many celebrities have written about it. Hundreds of texts, articles, and catalogs have been published. More than a hundred exhibitions have been presented on his work from that of the Artistic Center of Arequipa and touring the world until our initial days of the third millennium.
A very high technical level, a masterful handling of light and an exceptional look characterize this classic creator and photographer who could well be called one of the MOST UNIVERSAL PERUVIANS OF THE 20TH CENTURY
(http://martinchambi.org/en/bio/,2020 translated from Spanish to English)