Beginning in 1999 he and Peruvian photographer Adelma Benavente inventoried, restored and scanned over 15,000 glass plate negatives from the archives of Estudios de Arte Hermanos Vargas that had been stored in cardboard boxes for decades. Yenne has worked for more than 20 years to discover and promote the work of early South American photographers. Without the determined efforts of Houston-based photo historian Peter Yenne, it is likely that this remarkable body of work would have never been known. ![]() Approximately 75 5x7-inch glass plate negatives, and just a few vintage prints, survive today. The Vargas brothers used their technical mastery, ingenuity and creative vision to produce a dazzling portfolio of night photographs between about 19. The brothers, however, used light flashes creatively. Prior to the Vargas images, flash-lit photographs tended to be short exposures with the flash at or near the camera, resulting in the familiar on-camera strobe look that we are all familiar with. The combination of long exposures with flash powder was also new. They used bonfires, car headlights, magnesium flashes and moonlight, in whatever combination served their needs. Their cinematic vision combined long exposures taken in moonlight with strategically placed lights within the image. ![]() They placed lights in various places within the scene, often employing backlighting for dramatic effect. The brothers understood that light could be used to create mood and atmosphere in a way that had never been done before–– at least outside of a studio. ![]() As far back as the 1860s, photographers such as Nadar in France and Charles Piazzi Smyth in Egypt had used artificial light to supplement their low-light photographs, but it was not until the work of the Vargas brothers that added light was used with aesthetic considerations. In order to execute their complex photographs, the brothers needed to use added lighting.
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