Italian-born Luigi Domenico Gismondi was Bolivia’s most important early twentieth-century photographer and one of many European migrants who settled in South America during the late nineteenth century. At first glance, Indian and Girl with Ethnic Clothes from Cusco (1917) is reminiscent of earlier representations of ethnic “types”. In this studio photograph, Gismondi chose to depict individuals in typical Quechua dress of Cusco, Peru, instead of that of Aymara communities local to La Paz and the city’s surroundings. The painted backdrop is distinctly non- Andean – evoking instead a sentimental dreamscape of European gardens and Tuscan hills. The man seated upon the studio bricks holds a shell trumpet and a staff of political authority. Art historian Pedro Querejazu has identified the “girl” as the photographer’s son Luis Antonio. The child holds a cord that mimics the form of a drop spindle and thread. Upon closer inspection, the absence of the spinning tools becomes clear, as does the central presence of the small pale hand of the boy who participates with patient focus in the creation of this fiction.
This is the first time the work of Luigi Domenico Gismondi is presented at Biennale Arte.
—Lisa Trever
