Paz Errázuriz

Chilean photographer Paz Errázuriz began taking photographs in the 1970s during the Pinochet dictatorship, and in subsequent decades travelled extensively to document the landscape and people of her native country. During the dictatorship, her projects were in violation of the regulations imposed by the military regime, as she dared to visit underground brothels, shelters, psychiatric wards, and boxing clubs, where women were not welcome. Contintuing to focus on social marginality in Chile, Errázuriz is celebrated for her commitment to her subjects, spending months of years within a community, building trust and carefully studying social structures.

Errázuriz is one of the most internationally recognised Chilean photographers. She exhibited at the 22^nd Bienal de Arte Paiz in Guatemala (2021), and represented Chile at the 2015 Venice Biennale. Her work has been exhibited extensively internationally; important exhibitions include Another Kind of Life: Photography on the Margins at Barbican, London (2018) and her retrospective at Fundación MAPFRE, Madrid, Spain (2015). Errázuriz’s work is in important public collections including Tate Galleries, London, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and Museum of Modern Art, New York.

She has published a number of photography books, including El infarto del Alma, with the writer Diamela Eltit; La Manzana de Adán, with the writer Claudia Donoso; Kawesqar: Hijos de la Muer Sol; Amalia, a children’s book; and a monograph of her work entitled Paz Errázuriz, Fotografía 1982-2002. Co-founder of the Asociación de Fotógrafos Independientes (AFI), Chile’s association of independent photographers, she has contributed to magazines such as APSI as well as many press agencies and has received grants from the Guggenheim Foundation (1986), Fundación Andes (1990), the Fulbright Program (1992) and Fondart (1994 and 2009). She has been honored with the Ansel Adams Award, given by the Instituto Chileno-Norteamericano de Cultura (1995); the Lifetime Achievement award, given by the Chilean Art Critics Circle (2005); and Chile’s Altazor award (2005). In 2014 she received the Pablo Neruda Order of Merit.

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