Dartmouth professor Silvia Spitta visited UH on Tuesday afternoon to give a lecture on the Cuzco School of Photography in the Honors College Commons. The lecture explored the artistic, cultural and historical importance of the movement.
Lois Parkinson Zamora, a Latin American scholar at UH, said that the Cuzco School exemplifies a “golden age” of photography in Peru during the first decades of the 20th century. The most prominent artists included Martin Chambi, who was the most famous, along with Luis Manuel Figueroa Aznar and the Cabrera brothers.
“Peruvian photographers during the first decades of the twentieth century were among the best in the world at that time,” Zamora said. “They were both artists and documentarists. They recorded the lives of individuals, families, and communities in the Andes, and at the same time they produced beautiful visual art.
“It is a pleasure to enter into the history and culture that they recorded, and to celebrate their artistry.”
The lecture was part of a series of events arranged through the Center for the Americas at UH. The center invites prominent scholars to talk about a wide range of contemporary issues and topics that affect Latin America.
Speaking to a crowd of students, Spitta identified three artistic strains — indianismo (the idealization of the Inca past), indigenismo (lettered intellectuals and artists creating a political and artistic movement in defense of indigenous peoples and the terrible conditions they were experiencing in the present) and the ultimate goal of having natives represent themselves.
She followed up with a visual presentation and discussion of a selection of photographs taken by some of the most celebrated indigenous photographers of the movement. They ranged from Chambi’s stylized portraits to the ludic and carnivalesque elements of the Cabrera brothers and others. Many of the photographs existed as small carte de visites and had a social function as exchanging cards.
Spitta also discussed the challenges of her archival work with the Center Bartolomé de Las Casas in Cuzco, Peru, to preserve and catalogue glass negatives of photographs taken from the period. The Cuzco photographs were largely taken from the late 19th century onward until about 1950 and are part of the Andean Photography Archive. They exist in fragile glass negatives that have been well-preserved with the assistance of Cuzco’s dry climate.
Spitta noted that the archive keeps thousands of photographs taken by numerous photographers, and is a visual testimony of the modernization that took place as well as the many cultural and historical transformations of Peruvian society and the city of Cuzco in particular.
She also commented on the cultural importance of the photographs themselves.
“The photographs record extraordinary events of the time, such as the inauguration of the first rail line, the arrival of the first car, motorcycle and plane to Cuzco, and then of course a train derailment and a car crash,” Spitta said. “Perhaps most importantly, (they capture) the devastating earthquake that destroyed much of Cuzco in 1950.”
Silvia Spitta visits the University from Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, where she is chairperson of the Comparative Literature program. She also teaches Spanish as well.
She has written articles on Latin American topics and published two books. They include “Misplaced Objects: Migrating Collections and Recollections in Europe and the Americas” and “Between Two Waters: Narratives of Transculturation in Latin America.”
Spitta is now working on her third book project.
