Paz Errázuriz: Dare to Look First Major UK Survey – MK Gallery

MK Gallery continues its compelling run of exhibitions with the first UK retrospective of Chilean photographer Paz Errázuriz—a long overdue survey of one of Latin America’s most fearless and humanist image-makers. Titled “Dare to Look,” the show spans five decades of Errázuriz’s practice, bringing together 171 photographs that chart the complex, often concealed realities of life in Chile under dictatorship and beyond.

Errázuriz, born in Santiago in 1944, taught herself photography after a period of study in the UK and rose to prominence during the brutal years of Augusto Pinochet’s regime. In open defiance of censorship laws and military restrictions, she travelled across the country documenting lives that official narratives refused to see: sex workers, trans communities, psychiatric patients, Indigenous people, and political dissenters. Her lens has always stayed fixed on the margins—revealing not only who is excluded but why.

Among the highlights of Dare to Look is the now-canonical series La Manzana de Adán (Adam’s Apple), an intimate and arresting portrayal of trans sex workers living in Chile in the 1980s. These portraits, tender yet unflinching, stand as vital documents of lives lived in resistance. Also included is Antesala de un Desnudo (Antechamber of a Nude), a stark and affecting series taken in psychiatric institutions—images that speak to institutional violence as much as to individual fragility.

Errázuriz has never shied away from discomfort. Her photographs are not sentimental; they demand presence, and they challenge viewers to confront the structures that relegate people to invisibility. Although widely exhibited across Latin America and Europe—and representing Chile at the 2015 Venice Biennale—this is the first time her work has received a dedicated institutional survey in the United Kingdom.

MK Gallery’s director, Anthony Spira, describes the show as part of a growing commitment to photography that engages with pressing social issues. “We are thrilled to be working with Paz Errázuriz on this survey of her extraordinary career. With its focus on communities whose voices are rarely heard, the artist’s work engages with circumstances that feel as urgent today as they did at the time the images were made.”

This new exhibition follows MK Gallery’s previous landmark photography shows, including Ingrid Pollard: Carbon Slowly Turning (2022), a 40-year survey exploring race and the British landscape, Vivian Maier: Anthology, which presented over 140 previously unseen street photographs from postwar America, and Saul Leiter: An Unfinished World (2024), which brought together more than 170 photographs and 40 paintings by the New York-based pioneer of colour photography.

Running alongside Dare to Look is a programme of public talks and workshops offering further context around Errázuriz’s work and the histories it seeks to preserve. The show marks a significant moment—not just for MK Gallery, but for UK audiences, who are long overdue the opportunity to engage with a body of work that has shaped contemporary photography in Latin America and beyond.

Paz Errázuriz: Dare to Look MK Gallery first major UK exhibition MK Gallery, 19 July – 5 October 202,5 MK Gallery

 

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