Documentary Photography • Britain • 1970s
Luis Bustamante is a Chilean-born documentary photographer whose British archive began after he arrived in Hull as a political refugee in December 1974.
Forced into exile following the Chilean military coup of 1973, Bustamante and his wife lived in hiding in Santiago before travelling to Argentina. They came to Britain through the World University Service and were met in Hull by members of the Humberside Chile Solidarity Campaign. Bustamante subsequently completed postgraduate studies at the University of Hull.
During his first years in Britain, he began photographing Hull as a way of approaching and understanding his new surroundings. Streets, parks, pubs, shops, railway facilities and public spaces became the subjects of an extensive black-and-white archive. Bustamante has described the camera during this period as both “a connection to a new life and a shield that allowed me to look at it.”
His photographs of Hull form the foundation of his British work, documenting the city and its residents during the second half of the 1970s. He also photographed elsewhere in Britain, including Manchester in 1979, where his photographs include Oxford Road, Hulme, pubs, cafés and the changing urban landscape.
Bustamante’s work is closely concerned with everyday life and the way photographs accumulate meaning over time. Decades after taking the pictures, he returned to his original negatives and developed his own method of digitising them, preserving their grain and tonal character while examining details that had acquired new historical significance.
Work from Bustamante’s archive was included in a section curated by British Culture Archive for Use Hearing Protection: The Early Years of Factory Records at the Science and Industry Museum, Manchester, in 2021, and in BCA’s Life in the North | 1970s–1980s exhibition at Bury Art Museum in 2023.
Luis Bustamante’s selected photographic work is represented by British Culture Archive for print sales and image licensing.