La fotografía de Javier Pérez Castelblanco

The photographs that make up this book, and that are for the first time presented together in a publication, constitute an initial approach to part of the work that Javier Pérez Castelblanco carried out uninterruptedly from the late thirties until the day of his death, on May 5, 2006. From his extensive trajectory, the edition concentrates on the cycle that opens with the beginning of his activity and that culminates with the closure of the Estudios Rays in 1970, a space in which he displayed the best of his photographic production. It was in the summer of 2018 that Javiera Pérez, daughter of the photographer, summoned us to her house to entrust us with the task of rescuing her father's archive, initiating with the session that Javier Pérez took of Violeta Parra in her dressing room in La Reina, shortly before her suicide. This series was intimately connected with the rest of the images that until now slept in the various boxes with negatives that Javiera jealously kept in her house. The boxes with negatives had been patiently classified and ordered years ago by Javiera's mother, Diana Escalate, a noted ballet dancer of the Municipal Ballet of Santiago, a photographer of great talent and the second wife of Javier Perez. "With this we intend to begin to settle the debt with one of the most important Chilean photographers of the twentieth century, whose work so far has not had the attention and recognition it deserves." (HKB Translation) - Page [11]