New light on the Cusco School

Abstract

In the twenty years since I collaborated with Victor and Julia Chambi in re-evaluating, reprinting, and exhibiting the photographic work of their father, Martín Chambi, considerable attention has been focused both on his archive and on the work of other Andean photographers of the early twentieth century.1 Important contributions to these studies have been made in Cusco by the Fototeca Andina, at the Centro de Estudios Regionales Andinos, San Bartolomé de las Casas, and by the independent research of Adelma Benavente under the aegis of her private collection known as Instituto Audio Visual Inka. For every researcher, however, the major stumbling block to creating a definitive chronology for photography in Cusco between 1900 and 1950 remains the scarcity of reliable records for biographies of photographers and accurate dates and attributions of photographs. In an effort to help define new references for early twentiethcentury photography in Cusco, my own research over the past decade has focused on selected private and public photographic collections, as well as on publications that appeared between 1910 and 1940 in which pictures by early Cusco photographers are reproduced. 2