In 2022, Daniel Mebarek set up shop at the Feria 16 de Julio in the city of El Alto in Bolivia, one of the largest street markets in South America. Four times he put up a stool, a painted backdrop, a tripod, two cameras, a megaphone, a sign, and a portable printer. He worked as a minutero, an itinerant photographer providing portraits within waiting time to passers-by.

The children, women, and men who sat for the artist posed alone or together, with personal items or even a little puppy. Most of them identify as Aymara, an Indigenous people that make up almost the entire population of El Alto, and about a fourth of Bolivian society. Since 2009, Indigenous rights have been inscribed in the constitution. Historically, however, they have been crassly underrepresented. Especially in the streets, where social life unfolds and class affiliation is reproduced, the elite has taken centre-stage, while workers and Indigenous people have been pictured as the general masses. In Mebarek’s makeshift studio, they become individuals. What unites them is the painted backdrop of the Illimani, the mythical mountain which towers over the city.

The job of the minutero was created almost overnight with the invention of the Mandel-ette camera in Chicago in 1911. It allowed the development of tintypes directly in the camera, with minimal handling by the photographer. Through well-established trading networks, the camera was quickly sold all over the world and created its own niche in the gig economy of the time. ‘Earn a lot of money’ and ‘Be your own boss’, the early ads promised. For decades to come, photographers attended clients at plazas, mass events, beaches, and other leisure hotspots. Photography became a staple service, organised in Bolivia in the ‘Asociación de Fotógrafos al Minuto’, founded in 1946. The trade has almost vanished now, but inside the bustling market offering all imaginable services and goods, the artist found work.

Mebarek’s sign at his stand reads Fotos Gratis, Spanish for ‘Free Photos’, and the shoppers of the market did receive their portrait at no cost. However, as the artist explains, it was indeed an exchange: he, too, got their image as a trace of his practice at whose core is the photographic encounter itself. Rather than taking (away) pictures, as so many explorers, documentary photographers, or tourists have done, Mebarek’s intention is to share the moment when the photographer and the client meet. The accompanying video Mirar, shot on Super-8mm film, prolongs this moment and shows the artist interacting with his sitters, the curious crowd around them, and simple gestures while adjusting hair, clothes, and posture.

DANIEL MEBAREK is an artist working across photography, video, and installation. His practice is grounded in long-term fieldwork and close engagement with specific communities and sites. He explores themes of identity, urbanization, labor, and memory, while critically examining the power dynamics inherent in documentary practices. In 2025, he was a finalist for the Discovery Award at Les Rencontres d’Arles. He has received support from the Centre national des arts plastiques (France), PhMuseum (Italy), and Photolucida (United States). His work has been featured in publications including The British Journal of Photography, Aperture, and Camera Austria, among others, and is held in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A).

MATTHIAS PFALLER is attaché de conservation in the photography collection at the Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Pompidou. He has published on contemporary and historic Latin American photography, such as the monograph Histories of Photography in Chile 1860–1960, Pittsburgh University Press. Curatorial co-productions with the Pompidou include Wolfgang Tillmans (2025), Another Avant-Garde. Photography 1970–2000 (Shanghai, 2024), and Lynne Cohen / Marina Gadonneix (2023). Previous work engagements led him to the United States, Germany, and Switzerland.