Director
Antonio Wong Rengifo was a film director, photographer, musician, screenwriter, and producer. He is considered the pioneer of Amazonian cinematography and photography in Iquitos. According to art historian Giuliana Vidarte, the importance of Wong Rengifo's photographic work lies in the construction of a new image of the Amazon region, in contrast to the established paradigm of it as a "devil's paradise." At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, the rubber boom had cemented the image of the Peruvian Amazon as an uncivilized and savage place. Antonio Wong proposes a vindicating representation of Amazonian societies, aestheticizing the Amazonian landscape and documenting daily life in Loreto through portraits of dignified and hardworking inhabitants, with the aim of consolidating a new regional identity. Antonio Wong acquired his first camera in 1920. In 1924, he traveled to Europe, and upon returning to Iquitos in 1927, he established his first studio, Foto Wong, dedicating himself to film and photography. In 1936, he produced "Under the Loreto Sun," the first color feature film of the Peruvian Amazon, which included color images that Wong enhanced with watercolors on Kodak film. In 1951, he presented the exhibition "Discover Loreto" in Lima, a photographic exhibition of the Peruvian Amazon composed of photos of flora and fauna, landscapes, and portraits taken in Loreto during the 1940s. Wong Rengifo died suddenly in 1965, leaving behind a great legacy of photographs and films of the Peruvian Amazon.
