Montesinos Pastor, Guillermo

Born in Arequipa in 1877 (son of José Domingo Montesinos and Carmen Pastor y Gómez) and passing away prematurely in 1925. In addition to being a photographer, he was a cellist. He trained as a musician during a stay in Lima, probably around 1913. By 1916, he was back in Arequipa, where he primarily devoted himself to music and photography as private artistic activities (not for economic gain), known within his social and intellectual circle (upper-middle class). The Centro Artístico de Arequipa and the Hogar del Artista "Arequepay" were part of that circle. His main subject was the natural landscape of the Arequipa surroundings, which he captured from the rooftops of his houses (one of them located in San Juan de Dios). As both a photographer and musician, he was quite methodical and disciplined (adhering to a daily routine, as his daughter Adela Montesinos recalled), to the point, according to Villacorta and Garay, of being obsessive. The volcanoes and the Arequipa sky, with their constant variations of light and form, both at dawn and dusk, constituted his main thematic series. Although he had no major intention of publicizing his artistic work, he participated in at least one competition at the Centro Artístico de Arequipa, an exhibition at the Hogar del Artista "Arequepay," and saw some of his photos published in the magazine Mundial de Lima (1924, 1928, and 1929). The poet and critic Renato Morales de Rivera debated with the Vargas Brothers through the newspaper Noticias (in four installments, in 1929), mentioning Montesinos alongside Max T. Vargas and Emilio Díaz as one of the great exponents of this art in Arequipa during those years.