"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.