When the Chilean photographer Paz Err\u00e1zuriz showed her first photobook to a well-known society photographer of the day, he told her \u201clook, a housewife will never be a photographer\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s what he said!\u201d she laughs. \u201cImagine \u2026 that was my beginning.\u201d Today, aged 81, her work documenting life on the fringes of Chilean society sits in the collections of Tate Modern and MoMA in New York and in 2015 she represented Chile at the Venice Biennale.<\/p>\n
Between 1982 and 1987, Err\u00e1zuriz spent time photographing life in the brothels of Santiago, as trans sex workers fixed their hair, shifted their stockings, refined their makeup and killed time waiting for male clients. It was, she says, a \u201cbeautiful\u201d experience. \u201cWe talked or we\u2019d have a glass of wine or a coffee. They trusted me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fighting spirit \u2026 Black Demon by Paz Err\u00e1zuriz. Photograph: \u00a9 Paz Err\u00e1zuriz. Colecciones Fundaci\u00f3n Mapfre<\/p>\n
Such was her empathetic bond with her subjects, that she even developed a friendship with the mother of two brothers working in one of the brothels. \u201cI dedicated the series to her.\u201d She titled the project Adam\u2019s Apple, and it characterised a career defined by an enduring love of outsiders.<\/p>\n
Works from the series can now be seen in her first major solo UK exhibition, Paz Err\u00e1zuriz: Dare to Look \u2013 Hidden Realities of Chile<\/a> at MK Gallery in Milton Keynes. Other subjects of the 171 photographs on show include psychiatric patients, circus performers, boxers, political activists and the homeless, highlighting the humanity of those living under duress during the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.<\/p>\n Talking to me over Zoom from her home in Santiago, Err\u00e1zuriz admits to being nervous about the interview. But she remains an energising presence, even on screen: a huge smile and rippling laugh, spiky hair, she beams through my laptop like a grandmotherly punk.<\/p>\n \u201cMy idea is not to shock,\u201d she states. But shock she did. \u201cI was censored for such a long time. For instance, there was a small group exhibition at a museum during the dictatorship and my photograph was taken out. It was a reflection of a naked man in a mirror.\u201d It was artistic, she laughs again, not obscene. \u201cYou couldn\u2019t see anything specific.\u201d<\/p>\n Err\u00e1zuriz was born in Santiago in 1944. Her father, a lawyer, was both strict and traditional. \u201cI never got along with him. He didn\u2019t accept that I studied art when I finished school, so I resented that,\u201d she recalls. A childhood snap taken during her first communion made an impression about photography\u2019s importance as a record. Her head was partly out of the frame. \u201cI was frustrated because friends had very formal photographs. It seemed very unfair.\u201d<\/p>\n She trained as a primary school teacher, studying for a time at the Cambridge Institute of Education in the UK. While teaching in Santiago she began taking pictures, initially of children. \u201cI enjoyed that very much because they didn\u2019t see me. They forgot about the photographer,\u201d she recalls. That project led to her first photobook in 1973 \u2013 Amalia, Diary of a Chicken \u2013 in which she depicted a household seen through the bird\u2019s shin-high perspective.<\/p>\n She was encouraged in her early work by the book\u2019s editor, Isabel Allende, later the bestselling author of The House of the Spirits and a niece of Salvador Allende, Chile\u2019s president during the early 1970s. \u201cI didn\u2019t know other photographers. I never had the chance to see photobooks in those days. I\u2019m self-taught.\u201d<\/p>\n Forgotten \u2026 Home of the Elderly by Paz Erra\u0301zuriz. Photograph: \u00a9 Paz Erra\u0301zuriz. Colecciones Fundacio\u0301n Mapfre<\/p>\n But everything changed on 11 September 1973 when General Pinochet took power in a coup that saw the country\u2019s air force bomb its own presidential palace. When Pinochet\u2019s troops stormed the building, President Allende was found dead, lying next to his rifle. Isabel Allende went into exile.<\/p>\n Err\u00e1zuriz stayed. But the coup ended her teaching career; the junta considered her \u201cinappropriate\u201d for the classroom. Photography<\/a> and family life took its place. She married and had two children. Meanwhile, she began photographing Chileans living on the margins of society, embracing an informal social documentary style with a humanist sensibility. \u201cLittle by little, I became more active.\u201d<\/p>\n They said: \u2018Oh no, you cannot come in because women are not allowed here\u2019<\/p>\n In 1981 she co-founded Asociaci\u00f3n de Fot\u00f3grafos Independientes, which provided credentials and a membership card as she wielded her camera around town. She went on to photograph vagrants sleeping rough, elderly nudes, riot police, tango dancers, wrestlers, acrobats, dissidents and endangered ethnic groups. All are treated with respect.<\/p>\n Err\u00e1zuriz compares looking at her old work to flicking through a diary. \u201cIt was analogue photography and so you had negatives and you made contact sheets. Film here was very difficult to find, very expensive. You had one roll of film, 36 shots, and when that contact sheet appeared there were so many things on it,\u201d she explains. \u201cThe first six strips were of the protests in the street, where the military is doing this or that. Then came the photography of my son, a baby, and then at the end of the sheet is my grandmother\u2019s birthday.\u201d<\/p>\n In the 1980s, Err\u00e1zuriz volunteered at a charitable centre for people affected by Aids. The crisis decimated the community of sex workers she had photographed. \u201cSo many people died. From my project all of them except one,\u201d she says, adding that she remains close to that survivor. \u201cFor the past 10 years, the first call I receive in the new year is from him.\u201d<\/p>\n Like a grandmotherly punk \u2026 photographer Paz Err\u00e1zuriz<\/p>\n The dictatorship was mercurial, she recalls. In 1987 she began documenting the city\u2019s boxing community. \u201cThat, I thought was innocuous,\u201d she says. \u201cBut when I went to the place where they trained, they said: \u2018Oh no, you cannot come in because women are not allowed here.\u2019\u201d She won them over with \u201cimaginative arguments\u201d.<\/p>\n