Galeria Gato is pleased to present Martín Chambi: Postales, on view from 14 August – September 15, 2025. The exhibition revisits the legacy of the pioneering Peruvian photographer through the lens of contemporary artists working in small format. Through their respective approaches, they reimagine the possibilities of landscape in our ever changing world.
Martin Chambi is widely regarded as one of the most significant artistic figures from Peru, having defined an indelible visual legacy through his iconic photographic work in the early 20th century. With a strong sense of his indigenous roots, Chambi focused his lens on documenting the lives, traditions and surroundings of the Southern Andean people, particularly after establishing his own photographic studio in 1917 – first in Sicuani and then Cusco. To the world at large, Chambi’s outsized influence was first recognized and appreciated through the diminutive format of the postcard, which provided an accessible vehicle through which to disseminate his images to a global audience. This moment coincided (and arguably lay the visual vocabulary for) the cultural and political emergence of an Indigenism movement, cementing a sense of place and locale.
The exhibition looks back at this body of work, exhibiting a series of original photographic postcards from the early 20th century. Documenting all the minutia of everyday life, these images are startling in their depictions of a nascent urbanity as well as a complex relationship to nature. Juxtaposing the quotidian against the idyllic, Chambi creates a holistic view of a shifting world, where new balances are lost and achieved, and the bounds of nature are constantly re-negotiated. He also displays a keen awareness of the ‘artifice’ of landscape as he both proliferates and undermines its codes and clichés.
The contemporary artists included in the exhibition inhabit a radically different context, yet they too turn to the small format landscape to explore our swiftly changing sense of place. Speaking from numerous locales, they share a common thread as they try to capture the instabilities that define our moment. They also speak to the landscape in a post-digital, post-social media era where the lines between the natural and artificial have become blurred beyond recognition. In response, they offer a series of human-scaled moments of chance, intimacy and imaginative discovery.
The exhibition features Martin Chambi in dialogue with works by Majo Guerrero, Joseph Jones, Aya Higuchi, Kazuki Matsushita, Lin Olschowka, Alejandro Mego, Beaux Mendes, Alexandra Noel, Nohemí Perez, Dana Powell, Lucas Rubly & Daichi Takagi.
–Franklin Melendez
