Tierra de humo, Imagenes Fotograficas 1882/1950/Claudio Perez, Imagenes Fotograficas 1984/91.

• Author: Montecino, Marcelo

Publishing books in Chile is not difficult if you have the money. Vanity publications about the most arcane subjects abound. Publishing good books without any money is however more difficult. Publishing honest photography books is as hard as a banker's heart.

There is limited space for photographers in contemporary Latin America--their work is usually relegated to the closed walls of galleries or museums. Even then, it is reluctantly exhibited, for photography doesn't sell and is regarded as a minor art. Newspapers and magazines are often interested in either artless straight news photographs or glossy advertisements that have little bearing on everyday reality. In short, photographers who want their images to reach beyond museum audiences have a bleak future in Latin America.

A new initiative by three young photographers hopes to overcome this state of affairs by offering a collection of inexpensive pocketbooks. The new series called "Mal de Ojo" published by LOM Ediciones in Santiago, Chile, is loosely modeled on Mexico's prestigious Rios de Luz Series published by the Fondo de Cultural Economica under the direction of its brilliant and dedicated director, Pable Ortiz Monasterio. The series aims to publish monographs of individual photographers and books of historical photographs of Latin America.

The first two titles are a monograph on the young Chilean photographer Claudio Perez and a book entitled Tierra de humo (Land of Smoke) a collection of historical photographs of Patagonian Indigenous people in the late nineteenth and twentieth century. The editors of the collection have made an intelligent choice for their first books in choosing a young photographer with a future and a people who have recently totally disappeared. These indigenous people (the Alacalui, Yamanas, Selk'nam and Aonikenk...