Exhibition revalues ​​the presence of women in the history of Peruvian photography

At best she was the model portrayed. It happens that in those early days of photography, the role of women was marked by a high degree of underrepresentation: helping to support the portrayed children, orienting the lighting sources, assisting in the development processes in the darkroom. Even Constance Mundi (1811-1880), considered the first Earthling to take a photograph – misty lines from the Irish romance Thomas Moore – would be recognized as such when she adopted the surnames of her husband, Fox Talbot, a scientist who was to experiment with the flames of color, monochromatic light and the changes that chemistry operates in light before inventing the calotype (1830), that fixer of negative images without the light making them disappear.

It would be another woman, Anna Atkins (1799–1871), who in the 1840s tried contact printing processes, the blueprint. And when the daguerreotype appeared in the world, Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879) would take a camera in her hands to sell at least eighty prints to the Victoria and Albert Museum (1865), which three years later would establish a portrait studio. This is how they paved the appearance on the streets of Jessie Tarbox Beals (1871-1942), the first photojournalist in history. By 1920 there were 101 black photographers in the United States, one of them was Florestine Perrault (1895-1988), whose proud portraits would end up subverting the stereotypes of her race.

And with the advent of modernity, empowerment came. And the explosion: Berenice Abbott, Ilse Bing, Lola Álvarez Bravo, Imogen Cunningham, Madame d’Ora, Florence Henri, Elizaveta Ignatovich, Consuelo Kanaga, Germaine Krull, Dorothea Lange, Dora Maar, Tina Modotti, Niu Weiyu, Tsuneko Sasamoto, Gerda Taro and Homai Vyarawalla, among others, commanded the global phenomenon that in the 1920s was called ‘of the new woman’. More than 120 photographers in twenty countries generated truly revolutionary changes in life and art until 1950, a tumultuous period lacerated by two world wars that women made their own thanks to the avant-garde use of the camera, perfectly verifiable in the exhibition “The New Woman Behind the Camera ”which is exhibited at the MET in New York.

-Icon and Reveal-

Deprived as we are of a rigorous historical study about the female presence in the history of Peruvian photography, it will be behind the scenes where we find some vestiges. In the ‘milkwives’ covered with a kind of proto-burqa that held the children of the wealthiest families to be portrayed, for example. They were blurred times, of course, after the disembarkation of the daguerreotypist Maximiliano Danti in Callao (1842). Then we will glimpse two women illuminating that memorable studio photograph that Martín Chambi made in 1923. His daughter Julia, born in 1919, will inherit the paternal passion and will participate in the development of iconic images, such as the giant of Paruro, the beggar child, the Gadea – Arteta marriage and the splendid series on Machu Pichu. Afterward, she will cultivate portraiture and landscaping.

It will be from the 50s, with the appearance of the portable camera, when women become family and travel documentary makers. The German Hannerose Herrigel (Dresden, 1916) will go deep into the foothills of the Andes to capture images of deep beauty. And from his Miraflores studio “Foto Jeannette” will do the same by portraying the children of the district. At the same time, Alicia Benavides (Arequipa, 1938) would outline the credentials that will make her the first photojournalist in Peru since the early 1970s. Here is the trail of reports and portraits of celebrities from the world of politics and especially art in Oiga y Caretas.

Which brings us back to that impeccable journey through the family portraits that Daphne Dougall (Buenos Aires, 1936) would undertake. All his work is a delicate play of glazes and natural light that the poet Cisneros added with certainty: “In the short or long, it is a treatise on loneliness.” Exploring other forms of isolation, somewhat blurred and melancholic although always full of light, the recently disappeared Mari Cecilia Piazza (Lima, 1956) leaves an enduring work in her strangeness. Like the symbolic discharge of introspection and memory that the work of Anamaría McCarthy (New York, 1955) emanates. Studio portraits, fashion, advertising, experimentation, street photography, ethnography or photojournalism: today there is no field that is alien to women.

-Omission and remedy-

When did the female presence in Peruvian photography begin to become official? Will it be with the first photographic studios as collaborators or owners? Perhaps in the advertisements of compact cameras, which potential family photographers? Or perhaps as photojournalists in the daily press? These are some questions that the talented working photographers Sonia Cunliffe, Paola Denegri, Ana de Orbegoso, Perushka Chambi, Carolina Cardich, Marice Castañeda, Cecilia Durand, Lorena Noblecilla, Mayu Mohanna and Carmen Reátegui try to answer.

In fact, they do it from the collective “Blind spot, we were always here”, a twist on a local story that began by ignoring the role of women. So this handful of artists had no choice but to compare this omission with a recurring clinical term in ophthalmology: the blind spot. One who is always processing visual information but does not become visible by the eye due to a ‘failure’ of nature. Thus, the consistency of this group of images is the beginning of a long, fruitful and forceful answer: they were always behind the lens, making possible, as if by magic, the impression of memory. It was just a matter of making them visible.

More information:

Opening: Sunday, October 3.

Hour: 12 m.

Address: Jirón Battle of Junín 260 Ravine

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