Photo Estudio Luisita is a photographic archive of Argentine entertainment that records, among many treasures, the golden age of magazine theater.
Photo Estudio Luisita was founded by Luisa Escarria and her sister Chela. Heirs to a family photography tradition, they emigrated from Colombia in ̀̈̄̇, after what is known in Colombian history as “La Violencia”, and settled in an apartment on the mythical Corrientes Avenue, which simultaneously functioned as a home and studio until the anus.
Luisita took the photographs for the marquees and brochures of the Maipo Theater. Between the years ̀̈̄̇ and ́˿˿̆ and with a Hasselblad camera, he portrayed vedettes, models and dancers, comedians, singers, musicians, actors, actresses, contortionists and acrobats, tropical bands and drum sets on stage and in the intimacy of his studio creating some of the most iconic images of Argentine popular culture: Nélida Lobato, the Pons sisters, Amelia Vargas, Moria Casán, Susana Giménez, Susana Traverso, René Lavand, Atahualpa Yupanqui, Pepe Marrone and Juanita Martínez, among the hundreds of celebrities that can be found in the more than ̃˿.˿˿˿ images contained in the archive. Then books about models, prostitutes, cumbia musicians, children and dogs would be added.
In ́˿˿̈, Sol Miraglia, a young photographer and filmmaker who at that time worked in a camera repair shop, crossed paths with Luisita. This meeting marked the beginning of a solid bond of friendship, leading Miraglia to join the photo studio and assume a central role in the continuation of Luisita’s legacy. Since then, she undertook the enormous task of revitalizing the material through her artistic practice and preserving the valuable archive of Foto Estudio Luisita, through meticulous inventory, cataloguing, conditioning and conservation work. This initiative promoted an effort to revalue existing material, reinterpreting it from a contemporary perspective and making it available to new audiences and generations.
In ́˿̀̇, Sol Miraglia and Hugo Manso presented the documentary Foto Estudio Luisita, which portrays with respect and simplicity the life of the Escarria sisters, memory as an archive of the past and the role that Luisita had in a medium mostly dominated by male photographers. In March ́˿̀̈, Luz de noche, the studio’s first exhibition, was inaugurated in the San Martín Theater photo gallery, curated by Lara Marmor, Ariel Authier and Bruno Dubner. Luisa died two months later.
In November ́˿́̀, Estación fulgor opens, an exhibition curated by Sofía Dourron with the collaboration of Sol Miraglia at MALBA – Museum of Latin American Art of Buenos Aires, which presents a cut of the largest body of work that the sisters decided to preserve: the photos of the magazine theater taken between ̀̈̅̃ and ̀̈̇˿. The exhibition was accompanied by a publication that expands the universe of the exhibition.
In ́˿́̂, he participates in the exhibitions Del cielo a casa in MALBA – Museum of Latin American Art of Buenos Aires and Colibrí Culture curated by Jimena Ferreiro at the Museum of Modern Art in Buenos Aires.
Photo Estudio Luisita is part of the MALBA collection and important private collections.