The article focusses on the comparison of the work of Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala’s Nueva Corónica y Buen Gobierno (ca. 1615) and Martín Chambi´s photographic covers for La Crónica (1918-1929). It aims to characterize their artistic vision under the eyewitness concept (“Testigo Visual”), that is, a self-conscious attitude toward the registration and artistic representation in defined moments of cultural crisis in Cuzco (Perú) like the beginning of the Colonial era or, three centuries later, when the industrial and modern life arrived to Cuzco in the 20th century.

Martín Chambi's photographic work has always provoked voices of all kinds, both in his professional life and in recent times. He is the Peruvian photographer about whom the most has been said and written both in the country and abroad, but the paradox is that there is no consensus for a basic understanding of his work. And maybe that will never happen. There are those who consider their work as a simple trade, nothing transcendent; while others reinvent it at the level of surrealist work. Only in an approximation to the history of a photographer, to the context where he worked, to his intentions in the use of his images, and to his photographic practices, and considering what he himself said, can one properly understand the value of his images. . Because the photographic image is polysemic and protean, and taking into account the complexity of Chambi's collection, due to its form and co...