Ceremony at Puerta del Sol. Tiwanaku, Bolivia. Circa 1950.

Modern album with eleven vintage photographs, gelatin silver prints; ten of them approximate measures, 17 x 12 cm / 6.7 x 4.72 in, and one of 22.9 x 16.4 cm / 9.01 x 6.45 in, illuminated. All signed on the front by the author himself and on one, on the back, the legend “Copyright by Heinz Hirschberg. La Paz, Bolivia”, with his mailing address, “Casilla, 1118”, made with the same green ink as the signature made on the photograph.

The Portal del Sol is a monolith in the shape of an arch or gateway at the site of Tiwanaku, an ancient Andean capital, carved from a single stone, estimated about 1600 years ago. It is located near Lake Titikaka, at about 3825 meters above sea level, and is approximately 3 meters high by 4 meters wide. It is one of the most symbolic icons of Andean cultures, however the collection focuses on the inhabitants of the area; as architects of a ceremony performed at their feet with musicians and dancers, and also, busy with their typical chores in the market.

Feast and fair combine in the same time, recalling old times; in the ceremony they wear all the characteristic garments and attire of that pre-Columbian culture, where gods and men are bound by common ties: the best ponchos, aguayos, acsus, hats, feathered headbands, numerous ornaments and various musical instruments, such as drums, sikus and the anthara or pan flute (panpipe). Every year they come together in this celebratory meeting and daily life takes on a special dimension. We see in these images two delegations; the musicians from Tarabuco and the brown ones from the Yungas.

Summoned by this explosion of Indianness, that German photographer focused his camera on the native faces, on their most festive clothes and in full swing of their musical instruments, and on three of them, the everyday gestures at the typical handicraft and handicraft sales fair regional products, mounted on the occasion of that festival, as well as in a street stall deployed on a wide sidewalk, in front of a private house, where a chola enters with her huahua (little boy).

Heinz Felix Hirschberg (Berlin, 1920 - La Paz, 1976) was an active photographer in La Paz, Bolivia. There he had his photographic studio, as we read in the wet stamp located on the back of one of the photographs.