I was keen to visit Cusco, because it was the place where, over sixty years ago during the Christmas season, Irving Penn took over a local photographer’s studio and made what are some of the most incredible photographs of the Peruvian people. The locals would arrive for a portrait, only to find that the regular photographer had left on vacation, and in his place was a stranger. How many of them realized that the stranger was legendary Conde Nast photographer Irving Penn?
On the cover is a post card of one of Martin Chambi’s photographs. I tried but never found Penn’s former studio.