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Mark Coggins
Mark Coggins
Mark Coggins

Mark Coggins

Country: United States
Birth: 1957

Mark Coggins is a crime-fiction novelist and photographer. Five of his six award-winning novels are illustrated with images taken by him. His photos have been exhibited in galleries across the country and have been featured in books of other authors, notably Red Mist by Patricia Cornwell and A Lover's Discourse: Fragments by Roland Barthes. He has written about photography for View Camera magazine and is a contributor to Getty Images.

All About Photo: When did you realize you also wanted to become a photographer?

Mark Coggins: I've been interested in photography for a long time. I had a darkroom with a friend in grade school where I developed and printed pictures I took with an old 35mm Bolsey rangefinder camera my father gave me, but didn't really get serious about it until my mid-30's when I took a view camera class with Mark Citret.

All About Photo: Where did you study photography? With whom?

Mark Coggins: I've taken a number of classes and workshops with Mark Citret. While Mark is primarily a large-format photographer and I was initially interested in large format as well, I've evolved into more of "street photographer" using digital 35mm equivalents. However, I believe the training in large format has given me a deeper appreciation of composition, depth of field and exposure that is quite beneficial in making my images.

All About Photo: Do you take photographs between books or at the same time?

Mark Coggins: I move fluidly between writing and photography, doing both pretty much at the same time. When I photograph to illustrate my novels, of course, the two are yoked together in the service of the same goal.

All About Photo: Does your writing influence your photography or vice versa?

Mark Coggins: A bit of both. Originally, I was using photography to document street scenes I wanted to describe in my books. Then I hit upon the idea of including the photos I was taking in the books. Later I began to alter the plot of my books to have an excuse to include photos I liked that I had taken without reference to a particular scene.

All About Photo: What lead you to photography and why?

Mark Coggins: In the very beginning, it was the photos my father had taken during the Korean War with the 35mm Bolsey camera he eventually gave me. My mother recently found a box of his old negatives and slides, and several images-particularly of Korean children-are quite good.

All About Photo: Do you remember your first shot? What was it?

Mark Coggins: I don't remember the first photo I took, but I do remember the first one I developed and printed (around the age of 12). It was a snapshot of a large toy rubber beetle of my brother's. Not great art!

All About Photo: What was your first paid assignment/job?

Mark Coggins: The first print I sold was the photo of two chess pieces on a board that was used for the cover of my first novel, The Immortal Game. Several bookstores carried prints of the photo to sell to collectors who had enjoyed the book.

All About Photo: What or who inspires you?

Mark Coggins: I photograph street scenes from cities throughout the world. What inspires me most is capturing groups of people interacting or engaged in a common activity, rather than simply taking street portraits of individuals, although I have plenty of those in my portfolio.

All About Photo: How could you describe your style?

Mark Coggins: I like sharply focused images with a full tonal range, pulling in as much detail as I can in the shadows. Most all my work is black and white with a colder toning.

All About Photo: Do you have a favorite photograph or series?

Mark Coggins: "Geisha Confidential." It was taken one evening in Kyoto, Japan. I was walking down a back street in the older part of town when a cab with a geisha pulled up. The cab driver went in to an adjacent building to retrieve a second geisha. The photo documents the moment when the second joined the first and they began an urgent conversation.
I like the image both because I was so extraordinarily fortunate to be in a position to take it and because I did a fair amount of editing to achieve the nourish atmosphere (I believe) it conveys.

All About Photo: What kind of gear do you use? Camera, lens, digital, film?

Mark Coggins: I mostly use Fujifilm rangefinder digital cameras, which is perhaps appropriate since my first camera was the Bolsey rangefinder. I also have a full-frame Nikon DSLR that I use for non-street photos.

All About Photo: What is the influence of digital technology on your photography?

Mark Coggins: Although my serious interest in photography began with my involvement with large format film photography, I was never that good a printer. It wasn't uncommon for me to like the Polaroid proof I took of a particular shot more than I did of the final print. If, as Ansel Adams said, the negative is the score and the print is the performance, I was blowing it during the performance. Digital has made me a better performer.

All About Photo: Do you spend a lot of time editing your images? For what purpose?

Mark Coggins: I do a fair amount of editing. I often crop, convert to black and white, dodge and burn where necessary and try to make sure I've gotten as much detail in the shadows as I can. I also tone my images on the colder range of the scale.

All About Photo: How do you choose your subjects?

Mark Coggins: I look for interesting people interacting in interesting ways on the street.

All About Photo: Favorite(s) photographer(s)?

Mark Coggins: Oh, there are so many. Mark Citret, of course. From there, in no particular order, Sally Mann, Edward Weston, Ruth Bernhard, Eugène Atget, Diane Arbus, Robert Frank, Henri Cartier-Bresson.

All About Photo: What advice would you give a young photographer?

Mark Coggins: I can't tell you how to do this, but I do believe it is important: to develop one's own style. It took me a long time to do it, and I only realized I had done so long after the achievement. It's not a paint-by-numbers type goal.

All About Photo: What mistake should a young photographer avoid?

Mark Coggins: Although I've been guilty of it myself, I see a lot of photographers over-manipulating images. Perhaps it's the influence of Instagram filters.

All About Photo: What are your projects?

Mark Coggins: I shot continuously in my home city of San Francisco, but for some reason, my best photos seem to come during travel to foreign countries. I'm planning a trip to several new (to me) European cities this summer.

All About Photo: Your best memory as a photographer?

Mark Coggins: When the Patricia Cornwell's publisher contacted me about using my photo of Savannah's Colonial Park Cemetery for the endpapers of her novel Red Mist.

All About Photo: Your worst souvenir as a photographer?

Mark Coggins: Over-exposed 4x5 negative of what I was certain to be a great shot when I didn't properly seat the bag bellows of my large format camera.

All About Photo: The compliment that touched you most?

Mark Coggins: When my mother hung one of my (really not very good) photos in her living room next to a watercolor by very accomplished artist.

All About Photo: Your favorite photo book?

Mark Coggins: Along the Way by Mark Citret.

All About Photo: An anecdote that comes to your mind?

Mark Coggins: I lived next to Ruth Bernhard in San Francisco for several years. I'm embarrassed to admit that I didn't really understand her importance to the photography world until I met her at a party.

All About Photo: Anything else you would like to share?

Mark Coggins: Another anecdote: when I shut down my darkroom, I sold my sink to music photographer Tom O'Neal, who photographed the cover of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young's Deja Vu album.

Website

www.markcoggins.com

 

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An-My Lê
An-My Lê
Vietnam / United States
1960
An-My Lê is a Vietnamese American photographer and professor at Bard College. She is a 2012 MacArthur Foundation Fellow and has received the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (1997), the National Science Foundation Antarctic Artists and Writers Program Award (2007), and the Tiffany Comfort Foundation Fellowship (2010). Her work was included in the 2017 Whitney Biennial. An-My Lê was born in Saigon, Vietnam, in 1960, and now lives and works in New York. Lê fled Vietnam with her family as a teenager in 1975, the final year of the war, eventually settling in the United States as a political refugee. She studied biology at Stanford University, receiving her BA in 1981 and her MA in 1985. She attended Yale School of Art, receiving her MFA in 1993. Her book Small Wars was published in 2005. In November 2014, her second book, Events Ashore, was published by Aperture. Events Ashore depicts a 9-year exploration of the US Navy working throughout the world. The project began when the artist was invited to photograph US naval ships preparing for deployment to Iraq, the first in a series of visits to battleships, humanitarian missions in Africa and Asia, training exercises, and scientific missions in the Arctic and Antarctic.Source: Wikipedia In 1994 An-My Lê returned to Vietnam for the first time and began making a series of photographs informed by her own memories and by the stories and perceptions of her family. Since then her photographs and films have addressed the impact of war both environmentally and culturally. Whether in color or black-and-white, her pictures capture the disjunction between the natural landscape and the intervention of soldiers and machines meant for destruction. Projects include Viêt Nam (1994–98), in which Lê's memories of a war-torn countryside are reconciled with the contemporary landscape; Small Wars (1999–2002), in which Lê photographed and participated in Vietnam War reenactments in Virginia; and 29 Palms (2003–04) in which United States Marines preparing for deployment playact scenarios in a virtual Middle East in the California desert.Source: Guggenheim
Robbe Maes & Reynout Dekimpe
Robbe Maes & Reynout Dekimpe
Belgium
Reynout Dekimpe (Bruges, 1991) graduated as an actor at Luca school of arts. He created his own theatre company ‘RAF’ for which he writes his own plays. Next to acting and writing, creating worlds in miniature is his lifelong passion. Dekimpe's unique blend of artistic talents has led to the development of immersive experiences that blur the lines between theatre, film, and fine arts. Robbe Maes (Leuven, 1990) graduated as a filmmaker at the same school. He has directed several shortfilms and music videos. He his known for his playful and creative style that explores the boundaries of imagination. After meeting on a few filmsets, both artists moved to Antwerp in 2016 where the shared a house together. "Nr7" became their artistic playground for making miniature models and filming them in a darkened kitchen. During that period, they developed their unique style, which is characterized by handmade models as a central theme for cinematographic experiences. In january 2024, their first solo expo "Welcome to Fieldkapelle" premièred at the Rotterdam Photo festival, displaying several scalemodels and their accompanying photographs. Soon after they were awarded as "shortlist" artist for the Belfast photo festival and "longlist artist" for the Aesthetica Art price. Their current expo is now on display in the city center of Bruges. Instagram @robbe.maes @reynoutdekimpe
Frederick Sommer
Frederick Sommer
United States
1905 | † 1999
Frederick Sommer (September 7, 1905 – January 23, 1999), was an artist born in Angri, Italy and raised in Brazil. He earned a M.A. degree in Landscape Architecture (1927) from Cornell University where he met Frances Elizabeth Watson (September 20, 1904 – April 10, 1999) whom he married in 1928; they had no children. The Sommers moved to Tucson, Arizona in 1931 and then Prescott, Arizona in 1935. Sommer became a naturalized citizen of the United States on November 18, 1939. Considered a master photographer, Sommer first experimented with photography in 1931 after being diagnosed with tuberculosis the year prior. Early works on paper (starting in 1931) include watercolors, and evolve to pen-and-ink or brush plus drawings of visually composed musical score. 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(After reviewing this text, Fred asked that the author refer to his scores “only” in this way. When the author suggested that it was perhaps too long to be repeated throughout the text, he laughed and said, “Well, use it at least once.”) Although people knew of his scores, and occasionally brought musicians to his house to play them, no one ever stayed with it for long. In 1967, both Walton Mendelson and Stephen Aldrich attended Prescott College, Prescott, Arizona, where Sommer was on the faculty. They barely knew of his reputation as a photographer, and nothing of the scores. Towards the end of September he invited them to his house for dinner, but they were to come early, and Mendelson was to bring my flute. “Can you play that?” he asked, as they looked at one of the scores, framed, and sitting atop his piano. With no guidance from him, they tried. Nervous and unsure of what they were getting into, they stopped midway through. 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And like his skip reading, they are the closest insight to his creative process, thinking and aesthetic. Bruce Silverstein Gallery is the New York representative of the Frederick & Frances Sommer Foundation.Source: Wikipedia Frederick Sommer was an artistic polymath, with deep interests in painting, drawing, photography, sculpture and collage. With his work he intended to engage the world formally, to harvest its chance gifts, decontextualizing and rearranging found images and objects according to often shocking visual affinities. The artist played with a wide variety of forms, textures and scale to create startling compositions amid objects and sites others found too insignificant to notice. Sommer was intent on expanding the limits of where beauty could be found, and after viewing a display of original musical scores, he began to formulate his own theories correlating the graphic design to the sound of musical scores. Alongside many great artists of the period including Edward Weston, Max Ernst, Man Ray and Aaron Siskind, Sommer created a unique and avant-garde body of work formulated from his interest in Surrealism. His works have been exhibited by the world’s most important institutions, including the George Eastman House, Rochester; The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Delaware Art Museum; Serpentine Gallery, London; Charles Egan Gallery, New York; Philadelphia College of Art; Washington Gallery of Modern Art, Washington D.C.; Pasadena Art Museum, California; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Institute of Design, Chicago; Zimmergalerie Franck, Germany; and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. 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Eva Chupikova
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Eva is a freelance illustrator and photographer based in Czechia. She was born and grew up in the mountainous region in Northern Slovakia and after earning her degree in philosophy, she went on to establish a career as a freelance graphic designer and illustrator specializing in children´s literature. Eva has been intimately connected with photography since 2016. Her body of work falls under the genre of fine art portrait and minimalist landscape photography. A minimalist approach, the absence of colors, the emphasis on space and texture connected with a sometimes near blank canvas provide Eva the necessary means to visually express herself creatively. “As a photographer, I seek beauty in basic geometric lines and shapes, which are bound in harmony with the elusive variability and diversity of natural, organic forms. Photography, for me, is a means of capturing a distilled version of reality. It serves as a tool to seek out and unveil purified connections, free from the noise of superficial information and stimuli that inundate our senses and experiences. Through the lens, I strive to isolate and reveal the essential elements that might otherwise go unnoticed in the chaos of everyday life. Each image crafted is a deliberate act of reducing distractions, allowing viewers to immerse themselves in the simplicity and harmony of the moment.“ Eva´s conceptual portrait/self-portrait photography is closely intertwined with her profession as an illustrator. Through the use of techniques such as line work, drawing or collage, she is able to infuse her portraits with surreal and symbolic elements, blurring the lines between reality and imaginary. The main theme of Eva´s portrait photography is a figure or face reduced in expression, and it serves as an initial frame, against which a fleeting moment of consciousness takes place in hints. As a photographer, Eva finds herself drawn to creating series rather than single images. A series provides her with the opportunity to develop her concepts and articulate her aesthetic visions across a sequence of complementary images. By developing a series, Eva weaves together a visual theme that transcends the limitations of a single photograph, allowing to express her photographic intention in a more nuanced way. Eva has received numerous international awards and her work has been featured in various magazines. In 2022, Eva was awarded the grand prize – the ´Grand Prix Gold Star Award´ – for the series ´Leaving´ in the prestigious international ND Photography Awards for which Eva received the title ND Discovery of the Year 2022.
Arthur Leipzig
Arthur Leipzig
United States
1918 | † 2014
Arthur Leipzig (October 25, 1918 – December 5, 2014) was an American photographer who specialized in street photography and was known for his photographs of New York City. Leipzig was born in Brooklyn. After sustaining a serious injury to his right hand while working at a glass wholesaler, Leipzig joined the Photo League where he studied photography, took part in Sid Grossman's Documentary Workshop, taught Advanced Technique classes for three years, and exhibited his work. From 1942 until 1946 he was a staff photographer for PM. He also studied under Paul Strand before quitting the League to pursue a career as a freelance photojournalist. In 1955 Leipzig's 1943 photograph King of the Hill, depicting two little boys challenging each other on a sand heap, was selected by Edward Steichen for the world-touring exhibition The Family of Man at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, that was seen by 9 million visitors. Leipzig was a professor of art and the director of photography at the CW Post Campus of Long Island University from 1968–1991. In an effort to build his department and enhance the quality of photographic techniques, Leipzig recruited two well-known photojournalists, Louis Stettner and Ken Johnson (formerly a photo editor with Black Star) to his staff. He also recruited the now, highly regarded female photographer, Christine Osinski. Leipzig contributed his work to many publications including Fortune, Look, Parade, and Natural History, while continuing to pursue his independent projects. In 2004, he won the Lucie Award for Outstanding Achievement in Fine Art Photography. Leipzig died in Sea Cliff, New York on December 5, 2014, aged 96.Source: Wikipedia Leipzig shot thousands of rolls of film over five decades, producing beautifully constructed yet socially powerful photographs that take a sincere look at street life. Among the most memorable are photo essays on children’s street games, city workers atop the Brooklyn Bridge, Coney Island, and V-Day. Leipzig candidly captured New York’s favorite personalities as Louis Prima, W.C. Handy and Mayor La Guardia. His assignment locales outside of New York City included Peru, Sudan, and the Sahara, as well as places closer to home like West Virginia, Kansas and Jones Beach. Acclaimed as a sensitive and impassioned documentary photographer, Arthur Leipzig has always directed his camera toward the human condition and his deep love of people, shooting in a straightforward fashion, never forcing the moment but rather allowing a human story to transform simply and spontaneously. As a result, his photographs depict the human community with great intimacy and dynamic energy.Source: Howard Greenberg Gallery Arthur Leipzig's photography is represented in the permanent collections of The Museum of Modern Art, The Brooklyn Museum, The National Portrait Gallery, The Jewish Museum, and The Bibliothèque nationale de France. His solo exhibitions include Arthur Leipzig: a World View at the Howard Greenberg Gallery, Growing Up in New York at the Museum of the City of New York, Jewish Life Around the World at the Nassau County Museum of Fine Art.Source: Jackson Fine Art
Hsuan Chung
Hsuan Chung
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Hsuan Chung is a passionate photographer who started his interest in photography when he was seventeen. During his college years in Taiwan, he taught himself all the skills and techniques of photography and became a professional newspaper journalist before graduation. He wasn't satisfied with his works and wanted improvement. That is when he decided to relocate to Atlanta to work on his M.F.A degree in Photography at Savannah College of Art and Design. During his time working on his degree, he participates in many events and works hard to promote his photography works. With less than a year from graduation, he plans to participate in fundraisers, exhibitions, and other artwork presentation platforms in order to show his works to the public and spread his messages. Edge Since ancient times, human beings have continuously given life to the land and civilization. We constantly create stories and memories in each land which has its own temperature and culture. Everything on the land experiences a cycle of weathering, squeezing, and accumulating, then they disintegrate, and reconstruct to irregular solids. The project is based on my thoughts about the boundary between sea and land. The gravel in the soil is cracked by hitting each other under the lap of the waves, thus forming a new state. The minerals and gravel are brought back to the sea by the waves and become nutrients for microorganisms. The boundary between the sea and the land, that surges at all times but exists forever, is the birthplace of land and life. For me, that is also the end of human civilization. I used the square composition of a medium format camera to metaphorically refer to the concept of 'time' in nature that only humans have. I pressed the shutter after a series of precise calculations, and each square perfectly framed the time and scenery of the moment. In order to let the negative and the seawater fully interact, I soaked the negative in the seawater took from the shooting location. So that the salt and minerals in the seawater are able to remain on the negative. During the development, sea salt and minerals that stay on the negative produce chemical reactions with chemistry and silver halides. Human intervention and uncertain chemistry allow the whole process to create a memory journey between the earth and the sea, human beings and nature. The final images fulfill the purpose of recreating memories of different times and spaces and making them eternal. They not only record the memory of the ocean for 4500 million years but also witness the vitality of everything and the inseparable connection between human beings and the earth.
Marika Poquet
Marika Poquet
France
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I come from an artistic family of musicians, painters, sculptors and writers. I was given my first camera when I was ten years old. On every possible occasion, I took pictures of family and friends. What I enjoyed most was catching people in their everyday life. In my late teens, I started wandering the streets of Paris taking pictures of people. I would then shut myself up in a dark room. I still remember the excitement when I discovered what I had shot. After 15 years of working in finance, I decided to put an end to my career and started what I had always wanted to do as a child: photography. Statement I love discovering the world, capturing people’s emotion, and soul, documenting their everyday life. I take candid street photography. I wander in the streets with no precise idea following my instincts, trying to be invisible, looking for something beautiful, unexpected, surprising, magical, mysterious, ambiguous, or even funny trying to capture the perfect moment when everything comes together. Lately I have started working more on documentary projects using my street photography style. AAP Magazine: AAP Magazine 43 Colors AAP Magazine 46 Women AAP Magazine 53 Travels AAP Magazine 56 Shadows
David LaChapelle
David LaChapelle
United States
1963
David LaChapelle (born March 11, 1963) is an American commercial photographer, fine-art photographer, music video director, and film director. He is best known for his photography, which often references art history and sometimes conveys social messages. His photographic style has been described as "hyper-real and slyly subversive" and as "kitsch pop surrealism". Once called the Fellini of photography, LaChapelle has worked for international publications and has had his work exhibited in commercial galleries and institutions around the world. David LaChapelle was born in Hartford, Connecticut to Philip and Helga LaChapelle; he has a sister Sonja and a brother Philip. His mother was a refugee from Lithuania who arrived at Ellis Island in the late 1960s. His family lived in Hartford until he was 9. He has said to have loved the public schools in Connecticut and thrived in their art program as a child and teenager, although he struggled with bullying growing up. Then he moved to Raleigh, North Carolina, with his family, where they lived until he was 14, before moving back to Fairfield, Connecticut. He was bullied in his North Carolina school for his sexuality. When he was 15, he ran away from home to become a busboy at Studio 54 in New York City. Eventually, he returned to North Carolina to enroll in the North Carolina School of the Arts. His first photograph was of his mother Helga on a family vacation in Puerto Rico. LaChapelle credits his mother for influencing his art direction in the way she set up scenes for family photos in his youth. LaChapelle was affiliated in the 1980s with 303 Gallery which also exhibited artists such as Doug Ait. After people from Interview magazine saw his work exhibited, LaChapelle was offered work with the magazine. When LaChapelle was 17 years old, he met Andy Warhol, who hired him as a photographer for Interview Magazine. Warhol reportedly told LaChapelle "Do whatever you want. Just make sure everybody looks good." LaChapelle's images subsequently appeared on the covers and pages of magazines such as Details, GQ, i-D, The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, The Face, Vanity Fair, Vogue Italia, and Vogue Paris. LaChapelle's work has been called "meticulously created in a high-gloss, color-popping, hyper-realistic style", and his photos are known to, "crackle with subversive – or at least hilarious – ideas, rude energy and laughter. They are full of juicy life." In 1995 David LaChapelle shot the famous 'kissing sailors' advertisement for Diesel. It was staged at the peace celebration of World War II and became one of the first public advertisements showing a gay or lesbian couple kissing. Much of its controversy was due it being published at the height of the Don't ask, Don't tell debates in United States, which had led to the U.S. Government to bar openly gay, lesbian, or bisexual persons from military service. In a long article published by Frieze in 1996, the advertisement was credited for its "overarching tone of heavy-handed humor and sarcasm". In September 2011 when the Don't ask, Don't tell law was finally removed by President Barack Obama, Renzo Rosso, the founder and president of Diesel, who originally had approved and pushed for the advertisement, said "16 years ago people wouldn't stop complaining about this ad. Now it's finally accepted legally." Themes in LaChapelle's art photography, which he has developed in his Maui home, include salvation, redemption, paradise, and consumerism. It is clear that LaChapelle's moving in this, "new direction highlights his interest and understanding of both contemporary practice and art history". LaChapelle's images "both bizarre and gorgeous have forged a singular style that is unique, original, and perfectly unmistakeable." His photographs have been collected in a number of books. LaChapelle Land (1996) was selected as one of 101 "Seminal Photographic Books of the Twentieth Century" and is "highly valued by collectors". His second book, Hotel LaChapelle (1999), was described as a "garish, sexy, enchanting trip". Heaven to Hell (2006) featured "almost twice as many images as its predecessors", and "is an explosive compilation of new work by the visionary photographer." LaChapelle, Artists and Prostitutes (2006), a limited-edition, signed, numbered book contains 688 pages of photographs taken between 1985 and 2005. Artists and Prostitutes was published by Taschen and includes a photograph of the publisher Benedikt Taschen in a sadomasochism scene.Source: Wikipedia David LaChapelle is a celebrated American photographer and video artist. He is perhaps best known for his commercial fashion portraits of celebrities and models, including photos of Amanda Lepore and Angelina Jolie. LaChapelle’s signature blend of colorful, conceptual imagery bears the influence of both Surrealism and Pop Art. Often humorous or provocative, his use of full or partial nudity in numerous advertisements and editorial shoots prompted Helmut Newton to remark, “A lot of the nudity is just gratuitous. But someone who makes me laugh is David LaChapelle. I think he's very bright, very funny, and good.” An avid consumer of pop culture, LaChapelle is also inspired by the breadth of art history, frequently evoking the compositions or poses of Renaissance paintings. Born on March 11, 1963 in Fairfield, CT, LaChapelle’s early work was noticed by Andy Warhol, who then offered him a job at Interview Magazine in the 1980s. His photographs are included in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the National Portrait Gallery in London, and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, among others. He currently lives and works in New York, NY.Source: Artnet
Martín Chambi
Martín Chambi
Peru
1891 | † 1973
Martín Chambi Jiménez was a Peruvian photographer, originally from southern Peru. He was one of the first major Indigenous Latin American photographers. Recognized for the profound historic and ethnic documentary value of his photographs, he was a prolific portrait photographer in the towns and countryside of the Peruvian Andes. As well as being the leading portrait photographer in Cuzco, Chambi made many landscape photographs, which he sold mainly in the form of postcards, a format he pioneered in Peru. In 1979, New York's Museum of Modern Art held a Chambi retrospective, which later traveled to various locations and inspired other international expositions of his work. Martín Chambi was born into a Quechua-speaking peasant family in one of the poorest regions of Peru, at the end of the nineteenth century. When his father went to work in a Carabaya Province gold mine on a small tributary of the River Inambari, Martin went along. There he had his first contact with photography, learning the rudiments from the photographer of the Santo Domingo Mine near Coaza (owned by the Inca Mining Company of Bradford, Pa). This chance encounter planted the spark that made him seek to support himself as a professional photographer. With that idea in mind, he headed in 1908 to the city of Arequipa, where photography was more developed and where there were established photographers who had taken the time to develop individual photographic styles and impeccable technique. Chambi initially served as an apprentice in the studio of Max T. Vargas, but after nine years set up his own studio in Sicuani in 1917, publishing his first postcards in November of that year. In 1923 he moved to Cuzco and opened a studio there, photographing both society figures and his Indigenous compatriots. During his career, Chambi also traveled the Andes extensively, photographing landscapes, Inca ruins, and local people. Chambi began his work as a photographer as an apprentice to Max T. Vargas in Arequipa, Peru. During this time as an apprentice, Chambi learned different ways of manipulating light for portraits in the studio. His daughter, Julia Chambi, is quoted as saying, "my father was enchanted by light." His studio in Cuzco included a set of blinds and shutters made specifically so that he could alter the natural lighting to best suit his photographs. Furthermore, most of Chambi's photos of Indigenous people were taken outside so that he could use only natural lighting. Chambi produced a variety of works over his career as a photographer. Within the studio, he took many portraits of both wealthy and elite members of society, as well as the Indigenous people; he also took many self-portraits. Chambi is well-known for his work in documenting the Indigenous culture, including Machu-Picchu and other ruins. In a magazine interview in 1936, he is quoted saying "in my archive I have more than two hundred photographs of diverse aspects of the Quechua culture." He took pictures of ruins and architecture, but also tried to capture the events of everyday life. With regard to Chambi's diverse work, Jorge Heredia once said, "He has been the photographer of whites who seek after his images, but also of Indians and Mestizos." In addition to taking photographs for individual commissions or for his own personal interests, Chambi also used his photographs in other publications. One such publication was the use of his photographs in postcards. The other main use for his photographs was in a weekly Argentine newspaper called La Nación ("The Nation") where he contributed photographs of artists, writers, and any other assignments he was commissioned to do. Chambi traveled to Chile to exhibit some of his artworks and used his artistic skills to allow the audience to understand how the photographer prioritized the Indigenous outcome that relates to the Peruvians and the Chileans. There were some arguments that the two countries disagreed with each other when involving the differences of race, indigeneity, and civilization. The photographer managed to redevelop the process through his artwork, letting the viewers and art critics to understand these types of political issues that concern the Chileans and the Peruvians. The Peruvians were able to accept Indigenous people from various countries, but the Chileans did not accept them because of the 'pacification' campaigns of the late 19th century. The Mapuche leaders discuss educational benefits; however, they were dealing with some problems with governmental authorities that involves Chile and Peru. Chambi was determined to debunk racial stereotypes, but often up reinforcing them. El Sol, La Nacion, and other news critics prioritize the photographer's artwork because it would enable them to discuss national boundaries and open up ideological debate. Eighty-eight images by Peruvian photographer Martin Chambi have been added to the archives of the famous Instituto Moreira Salles (IMS) in Brazil. It gives the public an opportunity to discover one of the first major, indigenous Latin American photographers. Face Andina features nearly 90 photographs and 23 postcards of studio portraits and the urban and rural landscapes of Cuzco, Arequipa and Puno.Source: Wikipedia
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