CHIU - CHIU CHILE Print - Limited Edition of 10

At the age of twenty, I spent 2 years in Ecuador, which determined my 1st job as a tour guide and my eternal desire to travel. After these years spent abroad, I settled down in Paris to work in the photographic press. This was followed by more than ten years in the luxury goods industry, which were decisive in shaping my eye for visual detail. The idiom "the devil is in the detail" took on its full meaning. This experience at Cartier and Dior, two of France's biggest luxury goods companies, where I was in charge of information for the international press, included the production of all visuals for them. These years were followed by other experiences, again in the press, and always linked to photography. In 2010, I moved to the far north-west of Argentina, in the heart of the Andes, for a short 3-week trip, and stayed there for almost 5 years in a row. Having worked with many talented photographers, for a long time I felt prevented from taking photos. With time and distance, I finally allowed myself to! And it all starts here, in Tilcara. I started photographing landscapes, flowers, architecture and, at the same time, all the graffiti I came across to create my photos - collages. These were my first photographic works. When I speak of graffiti, I'm talking precisely about solitary phrases scrawled on city or village walls, not the works of street artists. During the pandemic and its confinements, I stayed in Argentina again for almost a year at a time, and my work evolved a lot as a result. I've gone from very talkative collages to stripped-down, almost desert-like works, both literally and figuratively. On the one hand, I reduce the amount of graffiti in my collages to a minimum, while on the other, I photograph more and more of the exceptional landscapes I'm lucky enough to come across. As I travel back and forth, particularly in Argentina, regularly in Chile and sometimes in Bolivia as well, I seek out immensity above all else. Where nature prevails over the destructive global culture ... but for how much longer? The altiplano is one of my favorite places. These endless expanses impress and grip me. My first experience of such grandeur was in Ecuador. Every evening in Quito, I was astonished to see Pinchicha, the mountain that dominates the city at 4600m, silhouetted against the dusk. Perhaps all my landscape photographs begin with a sense of excitement.