From the time of their reencounter in Buenos Aires in 1958, Luisa and Chela Escarria—the Colombian sisters who founded, owned, and ran, singlehandedly, the Foto Estudio Luisita—began building a domestic temple devoted to capturing the beauty of others. In their home-studio on Corrientes Avenue, they portrayed vedettes, models, dancers, comics, singers, musicians, actors, contortionists and acrobats, tropical bands and drum troupes; an occasional child might, in all their innocence, be portrayed on the same plush ottoman as the others. These stars and starlets would pose, one after another, in the same three-square meters at the entrance to the apartment where the sisters lived and worked along with their mother, Eva, their pets and competition canaries. Born into a family of photographers, Luisa and Chela put together a ritual based on repetition and an economy of resources, creating some of the most iconic images of Argentine popular culture.

Temporada Fulgor, MALBA, Buenos Aires, December 2021.