NEWS AND MORE

LATIN AMERICAN PHOTOGRAPHIC HERITAGE.

Chambi working in the studio, along with his team of assistants. Cuzco. Circa 1935.



ABEL ALEXANDER

Argentine photographic historian (b. 1943), researcher, restorer, collector and curator of photographic collections. Gratia Artis Prize (2021) awarded by the National Academy of Fine Arts of Argentina.


He is the co-author of numerous books, essays, catalogs, and articles on Argentine historical photography. In 2021 he presented his first title of exclusive authorship: These papers are stronger than bricks (ArtexArte Editorial. Imperfect Pretéritos Collection. Buenos Aires). For decades he has worked as a journalist specializing in old photography for the Buenos Aires newspaper Clarín.


He is a 5th generation descendant of the German daguerreotypeist and photographer Adolfo Alexander (1822-1881).


He curates numerous exhibitions on daguerreotypes and old photographs nationwide. He has directed various Photographic Museums and Historical Photo Libraries. In 1985 he was a founding member of the "Dr. Julio F. Riobó" Research Center on Ancient Photography in Argentina.


Around 1992, together with Miguel Ángel Cuarterolo and Juan Gómez, he started the renowned Congresses on the History of Photography of national and international significance through 12 meetings.


He currently chairs the Ibero-American Society for the History of Photography (SIHF).


For 15 years, together with Juan Travnik, he organized exhibitions on national historical photography at the PhotoGallery of the San Martín Theater, in the City of Buenos Aires.


From 2006 to 2018 he served as historical-photographic advisor to the "Benito Panunzi" Photo Library of the "Mariano Moreno" National Library in Buenos Aires.


He has edited various photographic collections such as "Photography in Argentine History", "Scenes of Everyday Life", "A Century of Argentine Photography" and other titles on this historical theme.


In September 2017 he participated as co-author and guest speaker of the exhibition "Photography in Argentina (1850-2010). Continuity and Contradiction" organized by the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu, California.

By Abel Alexander (*)

"Works are loves and not good reasons", the apt title of a comedy from the Spanish Golden Age written by Lope de Vega where its author clearly alludes that it is actions and not words that really matter.


We now apply this consecrated and wise popular saying to excellent news originating in the field of Latin American photographic heritage; is that the Martín Chambi Association of Cusco (Peru) has received considerable financial aid from the well-known "Ambassador's Fund”.


The Martín Chambi Association, a non-profit entity founded in Lima on May 23, 2019, is constituted by the heirs of the Peruvian master and artist of photography Martín Chambi Jiménez (Puno 1891 - Cusco 1973), indigenous, photographer and humanist.


This news is linked to the fact that the Peruvian, Latin American and even world significance of Martín Chambi's photographic work appears through certain specific episodes curiously linked to the United States of America.


The first of them is related to the figure of the American archaeologist Hiram Bingham III (Honolulu. Hawaii. 1875 - Washington DC 1976), that explorer discovered in July 1911 - obviously, "discovered" for the western world - the remains of the city Inca site of Machu Picchu, disseminating his find through the influential pages of The National Geographic Magazine, an organ of expression of the National Geographic Society of the United States.


We must point out that with brilliant intuition, Chambi already understood in his second trip - made around 1928 - the great interest that was rapidly spreading throughout the world about that surprising archaeological discovery of the Inca empire. Installed in the same city of Cusco from 1920, his survey of that forgotten Andean citadel located 2,438 meters high, inspired his best photographic works.


 

Martín Chambi and his art: “The oratory and the climb to the Intihuatana. The open Temple and ascent to the Intihuatana”. Gelatin silver print -23.2 x 17.8 cm-, with white margins and at the bottom of the same, dry stamp of authorship: MARTÍN CHAMBI / CUZCO.



These magnificent records were marketed through journalists, travelers, explorers, scientists and in general foreign tourists in a circulation limited to the tourist and scientific fields.


But the great artistic launch of his works today considered world masters would have to wait until 1977, when the North American landscape photographer Edward Ranney (1942) began a sustained dissemination campaign in that northern country, the result of which was the exhibition around 1979. of these stunning views, no less than at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. This is how this brilliant Latin American camera artist achieved international recognition.


Several decades later, in 2021, another cultural initiative - also generated in the United States - links that country with the photographic archive built by Martín Chambi. The Ambassador Fund for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage 2021 has allocated almost half a million dollars to digitize in the highest quality and thus preserve all of the work generated by Martín Chambi.


The project presented to the Embassy of the United States in Peru and entitled: "Rescue and Safeguarding of the Martín Chambi Photographic Collection" finally won the call and as a result, the 40,000 negatives will be digitized and referenced appropriately.


The photographic archives of yesterday, especially when it comes to great authors, are of phenomenal importance, in fact, we can consider them visual historical encyclopedias because in them the memory of the peoples is kept with absolute precision. It is time for Argentina to become aware of so many of these forgotten treasures, which today are adrift. (1)



Note:

1. We have already reported in our Bulletins the effort made by the Argentine Historical Photographic Research Center (CIFHA) rescuing the archives of Harry Grant Olds and Alejandro del Conte, a private initiative that must be multiplied in other spaces -both public and private- in order to preserve the many files that are today at risk of destruction.

 

(*) Abel Alexande is the President of the Ibero-American Society for the History of Photography.



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