Portrait with Chickens, Momostenango

Between 1971 and 1979, Ann Parker traveled throughout rural Guatemala, working alongside the itinerant photographers who plied their trade at village fairs and religious festivals. These journeymen offered their clientele the rare opportunity to sit for a portrait, thus providing the images necessary for government identification cards, as well as personal mementos. For many of the subjects, these inexpensive postcard-sized (or smaller) photographs were the only pictures they would ever have made of themselves. Parker’s series, published in the 1982 book Los Ambulantes: The Itinerant Photographers of Guatemala, documents a photographic practice that existed since the nineteenth century, but had, by the 1970s, almost disappeared. Here, Parker reveals the vibrant, if rudimentary, trappings of makeshift studios, which featured boldly painted backdrops that bore messages like "Memento for you" (Recuerdo para tí). The rigid stance and unrehearsed facial expression of the woman in this portrait conveys the novelty of her experience posing for a picture. In its directness, Parker’s photograph captures more than the practice of itinerant photographers, and conveys the quintessential magic of photography.