Of indigenous origin, Martín Chambi dedicated a large part of his life to photographing the Peruvian Andes, reclaiming the pre-Hispanic past through the images of Inca ruins and portraits of life in Andean communities in the early 20th century. Chambi brings a new perspective to local photography of the time, proposing a unifying gaze of Peru and on the emerging indigenous discourse that was starting to gain force in this territory.

Eleven years after Hiram Bingham photographed the Inca citadelle Machu Picchu for an exclusive journalistic story for National Geographic, Martin Chambi photographed it through his own lens. After that experience, his work entered a different stage, in which the management of light, form, space and texture shifts towards singular angles and a strong personal aesthetic, making him an emblem of contemporary documentary photography in Peru and Latin America.

This publication received funding from the Spanish Ministry of Sports and Culture.