Manuel González Salazar, the Peruvian Atget

Abstract

The Lima-born photographer Manuel González Salazar documented the colonial architectural heritage of his native city, as well as other major Peruvian cities such as Cusco, Arequipa, Ayacucho, Cajamarca and Trujillo. Just as Eugène Atget had documented the old Paris that he saw gradually disappearing, González Salazar chose to photograph the architectural and artistic heritage of the colonial era, which dominated the urban environment of the Peru of his day, but which was threatened by modernisation and social change. Like Atget in the French context, González Salazar is an anomaly in the history of Peruvian twentieth-century photography, which is best known on the international stage for indigenismo and the depiction of pre-Hispanic customs. The rediscovery of González Salazar’s work invites scholars to pay greater attention to the cultural heritage of the colonial era, as well as to the archives that documented it in all its splendour.