[Photography by José María Eguren] (Between 1918 and 1935) by José María EgurenNational Library of Peru
More than a poet
José María Eguren was a person with great artistic creativity: he was an oil painter, watercolorist, draftsman and photographer. His art was discreetly disseminated and he was outside the commercial circuits, leaving it only for a circle of friends and followers.
The intimate nature
His artistic work was characterized by intimacy; it was as if his poems were brought to life, transformed into fantastical images and vibrant landscapes.
Get to know the photographer
To explore his photographic endeavors, we will delve into his album Miniaturas, a treasure housed in the collection of the National Library of Peru.
This bird of prey that we observed appears to be the same in both images.
Could it have been a live or stuffed bird? Will it have been the photo or the watercolour first?
Paintings first
Perhaps, on one of his walks along the beaches of Barranquilla, that cliff caught his attention and he painted it.
[Photographic thumbnail album], page 25 (Between 1918 and 1933) by José María EgurenNational Library of Peru
Eguren as a photographer
In his photography the images become distant and imprecise. For Eguren, photography should not record reality, but rather take the eye to the limit. The smallness of his images and the circular frame accentuated the remoteness in his works.
Many of his photos look like scenes full of mystery, stimulating sensitivity and poetic feeling.
[Photographic thumbnail album cover] (Between 1918 and 1930) by José María EgurenNational Library of Peru
The miniatures
José María Eguren's Miniature Photograph Album contains 525 photographs whose average size is 2.5 x 3 cm. which, it is estimated, the poet recorded during the 1920s.
A small camera for miniature photographs
He crafted a unique camera using an inkwell, ingeniously adapting it with a small aperture for light and a tiny lens. This makeshift device allowed him to capture experimental images that were both technically and visually innovative.
The characters portrayed
José María Eguren had a shy personality, but that didn't stop him from being a well-known figure surrounded by a circle of intellectuals of the time with whom he collaborated. Thus, he portrayed the social thinker José Carlos Mariátegui.
[Photographic thumbnail album], page 7 (Between 1918 and 1931) by José María EgurenNational Library of Peru
The images contained in Eguren's photo album
The images in Eguren's photo album stand out for the novelty of the technique used to produce them and for their suggestive symbolic charge.
[Photograph of frigate and sailboat] (Between 1918 and 1951) by José María EgurenNational Library of Peru
This album contains photographs to which Eguren added color.
He changed their position, cut them in various ways, among other interventions before and after taking them.
Anna Chiappe
She was his wife, promoter of Mariátegui's production.
The poet Martín Adán
Among other literary figures, politicians, etc.
Some of those portrayed are facing forward and looking upwards, while others are in profile.
[Photograph of the Convent of the Shoeless] (Between 1918 and 1952) by José María EgurenNational Library of Peru
The urban landscape. The suspended city.
In this album the city is presented as an imagined space, frozen in time.
A view on architecture
He presents a desolate architecture without inhabitants
The ghosts of the city
The city stops before the lens of Eguren, the poet-artist or the artist-poet.
[Boulder] (Between 1910 and 1920) by José María EgurenNational Library of Peru
The sea of Barranco
Let's imagine Eguren walking along the beaches of Barranco, painting or photographing marine scenes.
The watercolours depict ports
His watercolours and oil paintings capture the dramatic beauty of ports, cliffs, and the dynamic movement of the sea. His photographs, while also featuring these scenes, expand to include ships and bathers. Interestingly, one woman appears repeatedly in several of his photographs.
[Photographic thumbnail album], page 25 (Between 1918 and 1933) by José María EgurenNational Library of Peru
If we see them in sequence, they look like frames for a movie.
A series of strange characters
He also portrays domestic animals and animals from zoos, which were then found in the Exhibition Park and in Barranco.
The dolls
Another element represented are the dolls which, placed in a playful way, seem to recreate surreal and strange images
The living seems to be confused with the non-living
This creates a disturbing but fascinating effect. Sometimes, in his photography, the characters are confused between the animated and the inanimate, like the dolls that seem to come to life and have fun.
The organic could be confused with the inorganic, in an intermediate space that is disturbing like the Lima Zoo.
[Photographic thumbnail album], page 16 (Between 1918 and 1932) by José María EgurenNational Library of Peru
Tenderness of the photography
Restlessness, tenderness and even comedy coexist, among other feelings provoked by the appearance of the sitter.
[Photographic thumbnail album], page 7 (Between 1918 and 1931) by José María EgurenNational Library of Peru
Photographs, movements and stories
Each page of the album features two horizontal rows of photographs, each containing five photographs.
The storyboard
A row could be a sequence. These do not tell a “story” in the conventional sense, but rather resemble a storyboard.
In these storyboards there is movement from zooming in and out, suggesting multiple ways of seeing and understanding it.
Reading through the photography
What stories would Eguren have wanted to tell us through his photographs?
Pimentel, S. (2021). Eguren photographer: the infinite mystery. In J.M. Eguren, Miniatures: an album by José María Eguren (pp. 9-23). Lima: National Library of Peru.
Wuffarden, L. (2021). José María Eguren. Modern painter. In watercolors. An Album by José María Eguren (pp. 10-13). Lima: National Library of Peru.
National Library of Peru. (s.f.). The art of the poet José María Eguren. Peru Memory. Tours through the heritage of the National Library of Peru. https://memoriaperu.bnp.gob.pe/#/micrositio8/artePoeta
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