Is there something special about the rarified Andean air that influences the visions of three special photographers from Peru? They are Martin Chambi, Baldomero Alejos and Javier Silva-Meinel, and the correspondences between them are striking.
Chambi was from Cuzco and Alejos from Ayachuco, both over ten thousand feet in altitude. But then you have Javier Silva-Meinel who is from Lima at sea level so maybe this theory has to be tempered with the observation that the Hispanic-indian culture that permeates the air in Peru is as important as altitude.
Chambi was himself an Indian; Alejos consistently photographed the Indian culture of Ayachuco and Meinel, the modern photographer in this trio, has spent much time photographing the indians of the Amazon basin, not a surprising choice when you consider half the Peruvian population is of Indian descent. First, there were the Incas conquered by the conquistadores and their descendents the Quechuan Indians , and the Aymara, both of the Andean Highlands, and then the 40 or so tribes of the lowland Amazon region, the subject of much of Meinel’s work. And one mustn’t forget the Hispanic side of this culture: deeply Catholic, reserved and brooding: qualities of light that permeates each of the photographers’ work.
Martin Chambi Plaza de Armas, 1925
Martin Chambi: 1891-1973
self portrait 1922
Chambi’s magic pulses through his photographs,
the unmistakable magic that distinguishes him from all the photographers with
whom critics have wanted to compare him, from August Sander and Nadar to Edward Weston, Ansel Adams, Irving Penn, to Abraham Guillen himself. Mario Vargas Llosa
Outside of Latin America, Martin Chambi is the best known of the three, specially since his exhibition at the Mueum of Modern art in New York in 1979.
A working commercial photographer, his studio in Cuzco was well-known in Peru and still exists today under the supervision of his grandchildren.
Martín Chambi’s images laid bare the social complexity of the Andes. Those images place us in the heart of highland feudalism, in the haciendas of the large landholders, with their servants and concubines, in the colonial processions of contrite and drunken throngs. Chambi’s photographs capture it all: the weddings, fiestas, and first communions of the well-to-do; the drunkenness and poverty of the poor along with the public events shared by both. That is why, surely without intending it, Chambi became in effect the symbolic photographer of his race, transforming the telluric voice of Andean man, his millenary melancholy, his eternal neglect, his quintessentially Peruvian, human, Vallejo-like pain into the truly universal. One day Chambi will be recognized as one of the most coherent and profound creators photography has given this century. Amanda Hopinkson, From the book, “Martin Chambi 55″
I have long been fascinated by that curious sub-genre, the Group Photograph and one of its masters is certainly Martin Chambi.
Fiesta of the Guardia Civil, Sacsayhuaman, Cuzco,1930.
I’m sorry these photos aren’t a little larger and I know there are even more dramatic examples of this man’s wizardry with groups. Satisfactory examples of all three of photographers are hard to find online so we go with what we can. He is almost unique in his use of deep space in his group photographs and like most of his images they are bathed in that Chambi light, dark and infused with a terrible beauty that characterizes many a Chambi photograph.
Wedding of Don Julio Gadea, Prefect of Cuzco, 1930
Look at this justly famous 1930 photograph, for example; it looks like the wedding party is emerging from the deepest depths of the earth. I imagine Don Julio and his young bride have long since returned to those depths but here they are, frozen in time, on the pages of books and hanging on the walls of museums.
This man, an indian giant, was photographed by Chambi many times. It is easy to believe that Diane Arbus at some point came across this picture. If not, it is one of those fortuitous examples of images bypassing their makers and speaking to one another directly:
Diane Arbus, Jewish Giant, 1968
Baldomero Alejos: 1902-1976
Alejos is the least known of the three Peruvians – again outside of Latin America and maybe inside as well – and I only became acquainted with his work through the publication of a printing-on-demand book from Blurb.com.
Baldomero Alejos was also a commercial photographer who worked in Ayacucho most of his life, a city once known as a centre of Indian culture, now unfortunately more famed as the home of the Shining Path, Peru’s Maoist guerilla group.
One speculates he must have been familiar with the work of his better known contemporary, Martin Chambi, and a look at his work in this book confirms that impression. It will be up to some future historian to figure out whether the influence was reciproal or one-sided.
Alejos’s group photographs have many of the Chambi trademarks: deep space and the dark light. But this beautiful image is an exception: here the light is bright and luminous. And what an interesting way to compose a group shot so that the environment becomes predominant, making the point that it’s the hospital, the institution, not the people, who is the real subject of this beautiful image.
This by the way, is the cover of the book, available from www.blurb.com. The text is in German and English so if you speak German you’re probably in good shape but the English is somewhat stilted, as if generated by an automatic translator.
This Alejos photograph of a Peruvian nun illustrates another thing both Chambi and Alejos had in common and that’s the use of natural light studios. The north light, combined with the light of a high altitude, gives both men’s photographs their reserved, somber character.
I remember reading somewhere that Irving Penn , another master of north light, borrowed Chambi’s studio’s when he was in Peru and I wonder if he didn’t borrow a bit from his imagery as well.
Irving Penn, Cuzco, Peru
Baldomero Alejos
The depth of feeling in both Peruvians’ work is extraordinary. I wish I had more to add of Alejos’ imges but so little is available of his work, and despite Chambi’s two books that’s true of his oeuvre as well. Relatively few Chambi pictures have been published, a small part of his archives, and when you consider the Alejos archives consist of over 60,000 images – well, all you can say is, photo historians get to work!
Javier Silva-Meinel, b. 1949
Javier Silva-Meinel is becoming better known these days after several New York shows and a Guggenheim Fellowship for his work about Andean ritual practices. Much of his work has been in with Indian tribes in the Amazon Basin.
His work is distinctly different from his predecessors in that he’s not a documentarian, more a Magic Realist, with a stress on the symbolic and the mythic, firmly in line with the writing of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and the photography of other Magic Realists such as the Mexican photographer, Flor Garduno. Yet resemblances with Chambi and Alejos are many: the use of north light, a deep religiosity, a passion for Indian culture.
I am lucky enough to own a print of this beautiful Indian woman with piranha fish pressed to her eyes. Lately, fish has been some thing of an obsession with Meinel and rightly so since it must reflect the impact fish have had among the culture of the Indian tribes who live along the Amazon.
Meinel is sixty years old next year and it is time for some museum curator to take a trip south of the border and give this wonderful photographer a North American museum show with a definitive catalog. And while he or she is at it, they should take a longer look at Peru’s other marvelous photographers, Martin Chambi and Baldomero Alejos.
