Esteban Mariño: The forgotten photographer whose remarkable work was rediscovered at a La Parada flea market

Very few is what is known of his life. Although the exhibition “Esteban Mariño: An itinerant photographer in Pasco, Junín, Ayacucho and Lime (1903-1931)” has a team of five researchers: the curators Jorge Villacorta and Santiago Quintanilla, in addition to the researchers Yuri Gomez, Martín Ugaz and Juan Mendoza, of the photographer Esteban Mariño from Lima, only his birth and death certificates have been found , in 1870 and 1931. It is known that he died at the age of sixty without leaving any children, and that, in addition to his own studio, he worked as a correspondent for the newspaper La Crónica and the magazine “Variedades”.

For curator Jorge Villacorta, what is presented in the exhibition is just the tip of the iceberg: it is suspected that Mariño began in the influential study of Eugenio Courret in Jirón de la Unión, as suggested by an early portrait exhibited at the entrance of the exhibition, recorded presumably in 1890. “Taking a picture with Courret was not something cheap. For us, the image suggests that Mariño was a “godson” of the photographer or an assistant to the studio. The truth is that 12 years after that portrait, there is no image of Mariño that accounts for him as a photographer with his own studio, says the curator, which would support the thesis that he was an employee of the French photographer based in the capital.

It could then be thought that, at the beginning of the last century, faced with the high competition in Lima, Mariño left the capital in search of professional opportunities. Thus, the first records with his seal appear in 1903, in the central Andes. He will settle in Cerro de Pasco, where he photographs the high society of the time. “Thanks to Mariño, we discover what Cerro de Pasco was like in times when it was the capital of Junín, before Huancayo became the great commercial center that it is today. At that time, in Cerro de Pasco there were various diplomatic delegations due to the high number of foreigners working on mining projects. Foreign engineers and their peers from Lima triggered a process of proletarianization of the peasantry, to be incorporated into the work related to the mine,” says Villacorta.

A witness and accomplice at the same time

And Mariño was present in this industrial development: five images in the exhibition belong to the Science History Institute in Philadelphia (USA) made in 1911 by Esteban Mariño for the American Vanadium Company (later Vanadium Corporation of America). “These are five beautiful images that account for the exploitation of vanadium in Cerro de Pasco, used for the production of lighter steel, especially for the nascent automotive industry. It was extracted from the Ragra mine, the largest supplier of this mineral in the world”, affirms the curator.

For the researcher and collector Juan Mendoza, it is necessary to remember that, at that time, in the central highlands there were a hundred photographers, some of peasant origin, others from trade, as well as foreigners. “That gives you an idea of ​​the enormous visual richness when imagining the regional history. With this exhibition dedicated to Mariño, we try to recover not only the aesthetics of a photographer, but also his role as a witness and accomplice of his time”, he explains.

“In his images, we see a rough and tumble experience, but at the same time an eloquent sense of vastness”

Jorge Villacorta sample curator

Indeed, in the first decades of the 20th century there was the development of mining, the large hacienda and the development of road projects in the central Andes, further promoted by the presence of the Central Railway, which connected the capital with La Oroya, Huancayo , Jauja, Tarma and Cerro de Pasco. “It was a time when there was an enterprising and productive bourgeoisie in these cities. The origin of the riches in Peru is in that generation that dedicated itself to studying and then exploiting the natural riches of the interior of the country. And Mariño comes into contact with that social elite and with its authorities,” says Mendoza.

How to define the gaze of the photographer? For Villacorta, we speak of an artist attentive to the harshness of the environment and the impact of the immensity of the landscape. “In the heights of Cerro de Pasco, his images impact by an immensity that he knows how to frame with generosity and care. That’s what you see in the images of him: a rough and tumble experience, but at the same time an eloquent sense of immensity. These are rare images in Peruvian photography”, warns the curator.

A legacy on the ground

In addition to the spectacular Andean landscapes, the exhibition introduces us to a particularly versatile and itinerant photographer. As a correspondent for “La Crónica” and “Variedades” he records historical events in the Oncenio de Leguía, such as the National Congress in Ayacucho in 1919, the great feat of the aviator Giovanni Ancillotto, who achieved the record for landing at height by crossing the Andes between Lima and Cerro de Pasco in 1921, as well as the celebrations for the centenary of Independence in Huamanga. Likewise, the carnivals that characterized the so-called “oncenium” of Leguía, with its Versailles splendors, parades of allegorical cars, and coronation of queens. His works are also exhibited in his studio in Lima, located in block six of Jirón de la Unión, in the old La Merced street, where he returned to reside in the last six years of his life. There he dedicated himself especially to photographing society women, famous dancers and actresses in portraits that drink from the sensuality of Hollywood in the late twenties. All these images were made using an impeccable carbon photography technique, an ancient photographic procedure that consists of immersing paper in a potassium dichromate solution to sensitize it to light.

In addition to being a researcher and collector, Juan Mendoza is responsible for the recovery of a large part of the corpus of the exhibition, after years of incursions into the hodgepodge of the La Parada market. Certainly a terrible fate for this visual heritage. “The cachina is a kind of border, where the merchandise enters an identity crisis: either it is garbage or it is a treasure. But a lot of people get rid of stuff like this. Families do not value the albums of their ancestors, ”he laments. After 10 years of patient collection, it was clear that he was facing a photographer with his own gaze, and he dedicated himself to investigating his movements through the central Andes.