Photo: Quintana Contreras, Antonio Hands of a pampino worker 1959 Chile-I Region-Victoria Office Photographic Archive Collection, Sub-collection Antonio Quintana Contreras.
Portraits, landscapes, architecture, abstract. The subjects that have been explored by the great talents of our nation’s photography are diverse. Below, we tell you about some important names in the history of Chilean photography.
Sergio Larraín:
He is the only Chilean photographer to have formed part of the famed Magnum agency, which provides photographic material for European and North American magazines. His works have appeared in prestigious international media and in exhibitions in Santiago’s Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes and in Spain’s Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno. Attracted to transcendental meditation and eastern philosophy, in 1969 he retired from professional photography and moved to Arica, where he settled in a small town in Ovalle and dedicated himself to spiritual development. In 1999, he received the Ansel Adams Award from the Instituto Chileno Norteamericano.
Lola Falcón:
Aurora Falcón May was born in Chillán in 1907. She lived in various countries like France, Spain and the United States. She photographed bohemian life in New York, where a group of Latin American artists and intellectuals hung out. Her work is renowned for the black and white photographs that she took with a Rolleiflex camera. She captured everyday life on the streets, workers and children living in poverty, as well as architecture and landscape. She died in 2000 in Santiago.
Antonio Quintana:
He embarked on his first work as a photographer in the 1930s, collaborating with art and architecture magazines. He is considered the forerunner of social documentary photography in Chile because of his photographs of workers, children and religious festivals, among other themes. In October 1960, he devised and opened the collective “Face of Chile” exhibition. According to experts, it was the most important exhibition shown in our country, capturing people, landscapes, traditions and works throughout the nation.
Leonora Vicuña:
Born in Santiago in 1952, Leonora studied photography in Paris, where she lived for many years. Linked to Santiago’s literary circles, a great part of her work was dedicated to photographing Chilean writers and capturing bohemian life in the ‘70s and ‘80s. Her work has been exhibited in both individual and collective exhibitions in Chile and abroad. She currently lives in Carahue, in the Araucanía Region, where she has worked with women of the Lafkenche Mapuche community of Huapi Island, with whom she produced the Nosotras, Lafkenche de Huapi (We, Lafkenche Women of Huapi) exhibition in 2003.
Alfredo Molina La Hitte:
Alfredo Molina was a renowned photographer who was mainly known for capturing Chilean high society and personalities from the world of showbusiness in the mid twentieth century. He exhibited his works in the Museo de Bellas Artes and worked for Zig-Zag magazine, where he was in charge of the social pages and special reports. He was involved in theatre as a set designer and actor and his closeness to the artists allowed him to photograph the most famous actors and actresses of the ‘40s, ‘50s and ‘60s. His work is characterized by its elegance and light and shadow play.
Paz Errázuriz:
She is one of the founders of the Asociación de Fotógrafos Independientes (Independent Photographers’ Association, AFI), created in the early ‘80s. Although she was a self-taught photographer, her first works appeared in national and international media and in the Vicaría de la Solidaridad (Vicariate of Solidarity). She later received formal training at the International Center of Photography in New York. Her work is mainly composed of black and white portraits in which she explores precariousness and marginality in different spaces, from urban to rural life. The Instituto Chileno Norteamericano presented her with the Ansel Adams Award in 1995 and she received the National Visual Arts Award in 2017.
Luis Ladrón de Guevara:
Son of a Chilean artist and Danish journalist, Luis Ladrón de Guevara was born in Denmark in 1926. At four years of age, he and his family settled in Chile. He dedicated himself to both professional photography and advertising. His links to the world of culture allowed him to photograph iconic personalities such as Lily Garafulic and Marta Colvin. He contributed to the corporate and advertising image of public and private companies. He received the First International Award from Sweden in 1995.
Marcos Chamudes:
Before dedicating himself to photography and journalism, Marcos Chamudes was an elected Chilean congressman representing the Communist Party. He traveled to New York, where his interest and vocation for photography was awakened. He gained US citizenship and enrolled in the armed forces as a soldier-photographer during the Second World War. He opened various exhibitions, in particular in New York’s Museum of Modern Art and the United Nations organization, where he worked for a time as a reporter. In the 1950s, he returned to Chile, where he opened his own studio and showroom. As the years went by, he dedicated himself mainly to journalism, distancing himself from the world of photography.
credit: Memoria Chilena
