Camilo José Vergara
Chilean photographer / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Camilo José Vergara (born 1944 in Santiago, Chile) is a Chilean-born, New York-based writer, photographer and documentarian.
Camilo José Vergara | |
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Born | 1944 (age 79–80) Santiago, Chile |
Occupation | street photographer |
Nationality | American |
Education | University of Notre Dame (BA) Columbia University (MA) |
Literary movement | de-urbanization |
Notable awards | 2002 MacArthur Fellowship; 2010 Berlin Prize fellowship; 2013 National Humanities Medal |
Vergara has been compared to Jacob Riis[1][2] for his photographic documentation of American slums and decaying urban environments. Beginning in the 1980s, Vergara applied the technique of rephotography to a series of American cities, photographing the same buildings and neighborhoods from the exact vantage point at regular intervals over many years to capture changes over time. Trained as a sociologist with a specialty in urbanism, Vergara turned to his systematic documentation at a moment of urban decay, and he chose locales where that stress seemed highest: the housing projects of Chicago; the South Bronx of New York City; Camden, New Jersey; and Detroit, Michigan, among others.