Martín Chambi was from the Peruvian Andes, from a town called Coaza, Carabaya district near Lake Titikaka in the department of Puno. He was born on November 5, 1891.
After his first contact with photography in the gold mine where his father worked, the Santo Domingo Mining Company, he traveled to Arequipa where he learned the trade from his teacher and guide Don Max T. Vargas , after learning and practicing in the workshops of the Portal de Flores de la Plaza de Armas, ended his stay in Arequipa exhibiting, thanks to the patronage of his teacher in the Artistic Center of that city on October 12, 1917.
In the following months, he traveled with his wife Manuela López Visa and their children Celia and Víctor to the city of Sicuani where he set up his own first Studio and workshop. Sicuani, capital of the province of Canchis, was a prosperous place at that time due to the development in the exploitation of alpaca and llama wool and its textile industrialization; During his stay there, his only daughter, photographer Julia Chambi, was born.
He established himself professionally and then decided to move to Cusco, a city where he arrived in 1920 attracted by its splendor and history. It is in this city that he carried out his most important and dazzling work until his death. It is here also where his children Angelica, Manuel and Mery are born and it is from Cusco that he achieved national and international recognition for his work.
In life and in person, he exhibited in various rooms and galleries in Lima and Arequipa, he also showed his works in La Paz, Bolivia in 1925 and in Santiago de Chile in 1936.
He was a photojournalist, for the Peruvian newspaper La Crónica and the Variedades and Mundial magazines and for La Nación de Buenos Aires from 1918 to 1930. He also published his photographic work in National Geographic in February 1938.