At one of the major intersections in Cuzco, Perú there is a large statue of Martín Chambi recognizing his contribution to the arts. Of course MOMA, the BBC, and many other organizations also extended such recognition through retrospectives and various videos.

Chambi was born in the near folkloric town of Puno on the banks of Lake Titicaca, and died in Cuzco in 1973.

In the early 1900’s Chambi traveled Peru and Chile documenting indigenous people with his large format camera. About 7 years ago I met Chambi’s grandson in Cuzco and had a tour of the Chambi negative/glass plate archives he was organizing with the goal of opening a Chambi museum. Concurrent with that visit, The Bank of Nova Scotia was holding a retrospective hence I got a good feel for his work. His portraits are his strength from my viewpoint-not his landscapes. I suspect his full length portrait of the 7’6” indigenous person

is his most valuable. The full story can be understood in the Spanish Language video linked below

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?shva=1#drafts/FMfcgxwKjTQrZMGcxCgChMLgQmKQbWQV?projector=1