{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.023121387283236993, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0, 'mean_word_length': 5.055944055944056, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Andean Self-Fashioning: Martín Chambi, Photography and the Ruins at Machu Picchu

This article analyses Martín Chambi’s photographs at Machu Picchu. At a time when pre-Columbian ruins were a key element of national and regional identity formation in Peru, used to engage with the role diverse ethnicities should play in new social and political relations, Chambi’s work offers a privileged lens for studying the role of photography in terms of marshalling the material past. Some images Chambi took at Machu Picchu offer a set of tropes for a photographic aesthetics of ruins – one indicative of the way the site continues to be venerated as an object lost in the past by contemporary photographers. Other images, however, not least his self-portraits and group photographs, depict a more historically aware, tactile and, unusually, enjoyable relationship to ruins.