Coming Into Focus

In a Remote Corner of Peru, Photographer Team Gentl and Hyers Lead a Group to Live With and Document the Country’s Last-remaining Incas.

- Fan Winston

When Deborah Williamson, owner of the Brooklyn restaurant James and a novice photographer, found herself in a Peruvian outdoor market teeming with apple-green cherimoya, roasted and ready-to-eat guinea pigs, cinnamon sticks the size of her arm, and vendors with sun-etched faces, she didn’t do what most of us would—that is, raise her camera to her eye to look for the best shot. Instead, she lowered her Fujifilm XT1 to her hip, prayed for the best, and started snapping.

Shooting from the hip (literally) is one of the many lessons Williamson learned in Andrea Gentl and Martin Hyers’s intensive photography workshop in the Peruvian Andes last spring. The New York City–based husband-and-wife team have spent more than two decades as commercial and editorial photographers, and their singular ability to light and compose shots, creating almost painterly vignettes, has helped shape the look of many lifestyle, food, and travel magazines. Their photos play particularly well on Instagram (Gentl has upwards of 60,000 followers), perhaps because of their zeitgeist-y subject matter—far-flung destinations, food and flowers, foraged and collected objets—but more likely on account of their craft. The team have become digital den leaders of sorts, giving feedback and professional advice to a growing band of aspiring photographers, stylists, and content creators who use social media as a professional calling card. Looking to up their mentoring in the analogue world, Gentl and Hyers started This Is the Wanderlust, a travel photography program that, not surprisingly, most participants find through Instagram.