Chilean photographer Paz Errázuriz began taking photographs in the 1970s during the Pinochet dictatorship, and in subsequent decades traveled extensively to document the landsape and people of her native country. Throughout her dedicated practice, Errázuriz became intimate with not only her home city, Santiago, but also Chile’s central valley, Patagonia, and Valparaíso, forming long-lasting relationships with her many subjects. Her commitment to her subjects is steadfast—she is known for spending months or years within a given community, building trust and carefully studying social structures. During the dictatorship her projects were in violation of the regulations imposed by the military regime, as she dared to visit underground brothels, shelters, psychiatric wards, and boxing clubs, where women were not welcome. In Paz Errázuriz: Survey, over 170 photographs are compiled for the first time, resulting in a retrospective publication spanning over forty years. In the words of author Gerardo Mosquera, “the spaces explored in Errázuriz’s photos—beyond the striking personalities—reveal an extreme aesthetic that also exposes the potholes and irregularities left in the path of modernization. Her work consistently focuses on the social marginality that continues to plague the country, thereby capsizing Chile’s image of buoyancy by intuitively penetrating the contradictions—the innumerable cracks and fissures—that persist to this day.”
Paz Errázuriz (born in Santiago, Chile, 1944) has published books including El Infarto del Alma (1993), La Manzana de Adán (1989), Kawésqar: Hijos de la Mujer Sol (2005), Amalia (1973), and Paz Errázuriz, fotografía 1982–2002 (2004). In 1981, she cofounded the Asociación de Fotógrafos Independientes. She was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1986, as well as a Fulbright grant in 1992. Her work has been exhibited worldwide, and in 2015 she and Lotty Rosenfeld represented Chile at the Venice Biennale. She was also awarded the 2015 PHotoEspaña Award.
Juan Vicente Aliaga (essay) is a Spanish art critic and curator. As a member of the Faculty of Fine Arts, Polytechnic University of Valencia, his research has focused on conceptual art, gender politics, queer theory, and cultural intersectionality. In addition to authoring several books, he is a regular correspondent for Artforum.
Gerardo Mosquera (essay) is a curator, critic, art historian, and writer based in Havana. He played a prominent role in organizing the first Havana Biennial in 1984, received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1990, and served as an adjunct curator at the New Museum, New York, from 1995 to 2009. The author of numerous books, his articles and essays have also been published extensively in journals such as Aperture, Artforum, Art in America, Cahiers, and Kunstforum.
Paulina Varas (essay) is a curator and researcher based in both Valparaíso, Chile, and Barcelona. She is presently a doctoral candidate in the history and theory of art at the University of Barcelona. She has authored and coauthored books exploring contemporary Chilean and Latin American art, and her writing is often published by international journals.