Andean Self-Fashioning: Martín Chambi, Photography and the Ruins at Machu Picchu

Abstract

This article analyses Martín Chambi’s photographs at Machu Picchu. At a time when pre-Columbian ruins were a key element of national and regional identity formation in Peru, used to engage with the role diverse ethnicities should play in new social and political relations, Chambi’s work offers a privileged lens for studying the role of photography in terms of marshalling the material past. Some images Chambi took at Machu Picchu offer a set of tropes for a photographic aesthetics of ruins – one indicative of the way the site continues to be venerated as an object lost in the past by contemporary photographers. Other images, however, not least his self-portraits and group photographs, depict a more historically aware, tactile and, unusually, enjoyable relationship to ruins.