IN SEARCH OF EVERYDAY HEROISM:
50 Years of Exploration
Daniel Chauche: Portraiture from Intimacy
Daniel Chauche has lived for five decades in Guatemala, the country he arrived in as a recent graduate, in the midst of a turbulent social context. Since then, his gaze—constant, profound, and respectful—has sensitively documented the cultural diversity, the invisible bonds, and the everyday dignity that form the human fabric of Guatemala.
This exhibition is composed of images from his first series in Guatemala—portraits of people in their surroundings—which he began in the Sunday market of San Juan Sacatepéquez in 1976. For this show, Chauche has used his last rolls of large-format photographic paper, marking the end of an artisanal chapter in his creative life. In times dominated by digital immediacy, these images reclaim analog photography as an intimate, almost liturgical act. Each paper print is unrepeatable, and each portrait becomes a bridge extended toward the other.
Faithful to traditional technique, Chauche rejected passing trends and consistently embraced photography as an act of contemplation, presence, and attentive listening. His work—black-and-white, conceived in analog formats and hand-developed—embodies a patient visual ethic: each image is born from an encounter with the portrayed subject, from a relationship woven over time and trust. For him, portraiture is a “performance in a specific space,” a shared scene where photographer and sitter construct the image together.
His legacy is not only visual but also historical and cultural. He mentored many Guatemalan photographers, including other foundational artists. He was the first to make evident that photographic portraiture could be a work of art in the full contemporary sense of the word “art.” He was also the first locally to create portfolios of his work as “art objects.” His influence—both aesthetic and ethical—can be recognized across several generations of Guatemalan photographers who have learned from his way of seeing: with respect, with depth, and without artifice.
Daniel Chauche’s work does not impose itself; it reveals itself. It does not seek to astonish with artifice or to move with loudness, but rather to lead the viewer toward a pause. In a world saturated with rapid images, his photographs compel a slowing down, a shift in perception, an inhabiting of time.
To encounter a Chauche image is not merely to see a face or a scene: it is to perceive a presence. There is something in the stillness of his portraits that speaks from within. It is the result of a gaze that has learned to observe without judgment, to approach without invading, to construct with the other a dignified image. It is an ethics of perception, where the photographer does not capture but participates.
Daniel Chauche’s work feels, ultimately, like a mirror that does not reflect the viewer but invites them to recognize themselves in the other. What one sees is a fragment of a country, yes, but also a persistent search for humanity. In each frame there is memory, but also hope. There is pain, but also beauty. And above all, there is presence.
Inspired by thinkers such as Roland Barthes and Walter Benjamin, Chauche offers us an archive of humanity. In his photographs, the “I” of the observer meets a “you” that challenges, shares, aches, and accompanies. Thus, in the black and white of his portraits, a “we” emerges: a community revealed through the act of looking.
These images are not only memory or aesthetics. They are a gesture of recognition. In them, Daniel Chauche invites us to bridge distance, prejudice, and fear; to see in the face of the other not the exotic, but the familiar. To recognize—with the soft light of the analog—the possibility of a country that is more empathetic, more human.
Sol del Río, June 2025