Martín Chambi Jiménez (1891–1973) was a Peruvian photographer born in Coaza, in the highland province of Puno, southern Peru. He is celebrated as one of the first major Indigenous photographers in Latin America. Working mainly from Cusco, he documented the lives, landscapes, and material culture of the southern Andes in black-and-white photographs that moved between studio portraiture, archaeological sites, religious festivals, colonial architecture, and rural daily life. His Indigenous and mestizo subjects are often presented with dignity and directness, countering contemporary conventions that exoticized or marginalized Andean people. His work is frequently associated with the Indigenist movement in Peruvian art, which sought to revalue native culture and challenge criollo-centered accounts of national identity.

Chambi learned photography as an assistant in Arequipa and established his own Cusco studio around 1917. His command of large-format cameras and natural light produced portraits and mountain views of exceptional tonal range and clarity. Unlike photographers who served only affluent clients, he worked across social classes, photographing aristocrats as well as peasant families. That breadth made his archive an important visual record of Andean society during a period of rapid change, including the effects of 1920s land reforms and the growing cultural and political force of indigenismo.

Among his best-known bodies of work are portraits of Indigenous people in traditional dress, photographs of the Inca citadel of Machu Picchu, and records of Cusco’s religious processions and built environment. No single photobook based on this work was published during his lifetime. His negatives and prints were preserved by his family in the Archivo Fotográfico Martín Chambi, which became the basis for retrospective exhibitions and publications, including a 2006 exhibition at the Musée du quai Branly and a large retrospective in Lima in 2025 featuring nearly two hundred works. A Google Arts and Culture story presenting material through the Mudec Museum of Cultures further reflects international institutional interest in the archive.

Chambi’s importance extends beyond technical accomplishment. He is often called the “father of Peruvian photography” because of the scale and integrity of his documentation. By placing Indigenous life at the center of the national image, his photographs challenged established ideas of Peruvian identity and carried political resonance in a society where ethnic hierarchies persisted. Recognition expanded after his death, as scholars and curators in Europe and the United States revisited his work. He has been exhibited at institutions including New York’s Museum of Modern Art, which holds several of his prints, and is studied as a foundational example of Indigenous self-representation.

For photobook collectors, Chambi is encountered chiefly through archival projects, museum catalogues, and monographic studies rather than books issued by the photographer himself. Comprehensive retrospective catalogues provide the principal entry points, while later publications reproduce his plates with historical and scholarly context. Because the archive remains largely intact, print quality and sequencing vary, but the strongest editions communicate the tonal richness of the original glass negatives. Collectors seeking a single-volume introduction may look to publications from institutions such as the Centro de Estudios Regionales Andinos Bartolomé de las Casas or to books accompanying major exhibitions. These carefully produced projects offer both visual access and historical grounding for an oeuvre that remains central to the study of early twentieth-century Andean photography.

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