MARTIN CHAMBI

Martín Chambi is today regarded as one of the most important photographers of the twentieth century. Between 1920 and 1950 he assembled an unprecedented collection of photographs of the people and landscape of Cuzco, the ancient Inca capital that was in his day a cultural center in Peru. His studio was favored by the local elite, whose fiestas, weddings, and portraits he imbued with a unique outsider's sensibility. Above all, he devoted himself to photographing his own people-the highland Indians whose ancestors built Cuzco-with a keen postcolonial eye.

A campesino of Indian descent born in 1891, Martín Chambi (1891-1973) was a pioneer in twentieth-century photography. Mario Vargas Llosa is an internationally acclaimed novelist, playwright, journalist, and essayist.