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Documentos de Profesional
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LACOLECCINDEL
IVAM
L A F OTO G R A F A E N
LACOLECCINDELIVAM
INSTITUT VALENCI DART MODERN 27 MAYO - 23 OCTUBRE 2005
EXPOSICIN
Comisarios: Consuelo Cscar Casabn y Fernando Castro Flrez
Coordinacin: Josep Vicent Monz
Diseo del montaje: Tito Llopis (VTIM Arqtes.), y CU4TRO Taller de Proyectos
La seleccin que ahora presentamos est formada por 500 obras, de los 230 autores ms
representativos que conforman la coleccin. Est realizada a partir de las donaciones recibidas
CATLOGO
Produccin: IVAM Institut Valenci dArt Modern, Valencia 2005
Diseo: Manuel Granell
Coordinacin tcnica: Maria Casanova
Maquetacin: Maria Casanova y Vicky Menor
rea Tcnico-Artstica
Raquel Gutirrez
Comunicacin y Desarrollo
Encarna Jimnez
Vicepresidenta
Consuelo Cscar Casabn
Directora Gerente del IVAM
Gestin interna
Vicent Todol
Secretario
Carlos-Alberto Precioso Estigun
Econmico-Administrativo
Juan Carlos Lled
Vocales
Concepcin Gmez Ocaa
Jos Luis Lobn Martn
Manuel Muoz Ibez
Felipe Garn Llombart
Romn de la Calle
Ricardo Bellveser
Toms Llorens
Francisco Jarauta
Francisco Calvo Serraller
por particulares o por los propios artistas, de una seleccin de los importantes depsitos de la
Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Carlos, la Fundaci Josep Renau, la Coleccin Gabriel
Direccin
Consuelo Cscar Casabn
Directores honorarios
Toms Llorens Serra
Carmen Alborch Bataller
J. F. Yvars
Juan Manuel Bonet
Kosme de Baraano
Jefa de Gabinete
M ngeles Valiente
Montaje Exterior
Jorge Garca
Registro
Cristina Mulinas
Restauracin
Maite Martnez
Conservacin
Marta Arroyo
Irene Bonilla
Maita Caams
J. Ramon Escriv
M Jess Folch
Teresa Millet
Josep Vicent Monz
Josep Salvador
Isabel Serra
Publicaciones
Manuel Granell
Biblioteca
M Victoria Goberna
Fotografa
Juan Garca Rosell
Montaje
Julio Soriano
ISBN: 84-482-4068-5
DL: V-2411-2005
Est rigurosamente prohibido, bajo las sanciones establecidas por la ley, reproducir, registrar o
transmitir esta publicacin, ntegra o parcialmente, por cualquier sistema de recuperacin y por
cualquier medio, sea mecnico, electrnico, magntico, electroptico, por fotocopia o cualquier
otro tipo de soporte, sin la autorizacin expresa del IVAM Institut Valenci dArt Modern y de
los titulares del copyright.
PRESENTACIN
FRANCISCO CAMPS ORTIZ
President de la Generalitat Valenciana
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IMGENESDELTIEMPO
[La fotografa en la coleccin del IVAM]
CONSUELO CSCAR CASABN
Directora del IVAM
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MENSAJESSINCDIGO
[La escritura paradjica de la fotografa]
FERNANDO CASTRO FLREZ
73
COLECCIONANDOFOTOGRAFAS
Una historia interminable
FILIPPO MAGGIA
79
CATLOGO
535
NDICEDEARTISTAS
549
ENGLISHTRANSLATION
PRESENTACIN
FRANCISCO CAMPS ORTIZ
President de la Generalitat Valenciana
Por ello, nuestro trabajo en el mbito de la divulgacin debe encaminarse a despertar todava ms la sensibilidad de los ciudadanos en este
nuevo siglo. Desde esa perspectiva, la Generalitat Valenciana, a travs
de los fondos del IVAM, apuesta por la modernidad, y busca un
mayor conocimiento y trascendencia de los mismos, tanto en su
proyeccin nacional como internacional.
Con esta muestra tan significativa, por su doble valor esttico y testimonial, los valencianos tenemos la oportunidad de contemplar una
parte importante del valioso patrimonio artstico que atesoran los
fondos del IVAM.
IMGENESDELTIEMPO
La aparicin de la fotografa podra entenderse como uno de los descubrimientos de mayor importancia en la historia de la civilizacin. La
imagen fotogrfica es ms que una forma de expresin icnica y la
fotografa se presenta como una cristalizacin del instante visual, perseguida de forma insistente por la humanidad a lo largo de la historia.
Este descubrimiento puede equipararse a la aparicin de la imprenta,
el cine o, ms recientemente, a la aparicin de internet, no slo por los
cambios estticos y ticos que ha ocasionado en el panorama artstico,
sino tambin por convertirse en un medio indispensable para captar y
entender la realidad contempornea. Por tanto, la fotografa se convierte desde sus orgenes en un instrumento de captacin, crtica, esttica y, en algunos casos, de manipulacin de la realidad cotidiana.
Los artistas de vanguardia demostraron que la recreacin de mundos imaginarios que superaban el carcter documental de los inicios
de la fotografa era posible. Y su rpida evolucin entre diversas realidades y tcnicas nos lleva a la revolucin tecnolgica, que actualmente irrumpe en todas las actividades sociales, para incorporarse
como nuevo elemento testimonial del espritu dinamizador del arte.
Con estos nuevos propsitos deseo que el IVAM como espacio musestico sea un espacio vivo y abierto a las necesidades sociales y culturales de nuestra Comunidad, un smbolo de libertad creadora y realidad artstica, pero tambin como idea de proyeccin al futuro deseo
proponer nuevos espacios de encuentro y creacin. Por ello, ponemos
en pie uno de los ejes centrales de las colecciones del museo como es
la fotogrfica, y para ello quisiera referirme a sus aspectos tanto histricos como crticos.
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posea imgenes de sus poblaciones se construye una idea de la ciudad a la medida de los gustos burgueses y de otras ciudades espaolas o extranjeras, generndose una especie de conocimiento substituto del mundo.
A comienzos del siglo XX la fotografa comercial creci con rapidez y
las mejoras del blanco y negro abrieron camino a todos aquellos que
carecan del tiempo y la habilidad para los tan complicados procedimientos del siglo anterior. En 1907 se pusieron a disposicin del
pblico en general los primeros materiales comerciales de pelcula en
color, unas placas de cristal llamadas Autochromes Lumire en honor
a sus creadores, los franceses Auguste y Louis Lumire.
En la dcada siguiente, el perfeccionamiento de los sistemas fotomecnicos utilizados en la imprenta gener una gran demanda de fotgrafos para ilustrar textos en peridicos y revistas. Esta demanda cre
un nuevo campo comercial para la fotografa, el publicitario.
En las posteriores dcadas, los avances tecnolgicos, que simplificaban materiales y aparatos fotogrficos, contribuyeron a la proliferacin de la fotografa como un entretenimiento o dedicacin profesional para un gran nmero de personas.
Toda la fotografa es, en cierto sentido, un reportaje, puesto que capta
la imagen que perciben el objetivo de la cmara y el ojo humano, an
as hay mltiples maneras de entender ese proceso dependiendo de
cul vaya a ser su finalidad. Los primeros investigadores se limitaron
a registrar lo que vean, pero en la dcada de 1960 se dividieron entre
aquellos fotgrafos que seguan utilizando su cmara para captar
imgenes sin ninguna intencin y los que decidieron que la fotogra-
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La Coleccin de Fotografa del IVAM presenta una particular revisin de la historia de la fotografa, a partir de los pioneros que supieron diferenciar la experimentacin estrictamente tcnica, aportando a
sus obras un marcado carcter artstico.
Esta Coleccin se inicia con el mismo espritu de la coleccin principal, que sigue un criterio fundamentalmente histrico, orientado a
expresar y subrayar las caractersticas del arte moderno y contemporneo, as como las aportaciones especficas de su desarrollo en la
situacin cultural espaola y, muy concretamente, en la valenciana; y
est vertebrada por las esculturas de Julio Gonzlez, que aporta la
utilizacin del vaco y el ensamblaje de piezas en la composicin
escultrica.
Este cambio en el lenguaje artstico es el eje principal que dirige la
seleccin de autores que utilizan la fotografa como una forma de
expresin artstica, en paralelo con los artistas que conformaron los
movimientos histricos de los aos treinta del siglo XX, y de los que
surgieron posteriormente como el informalismo y el pop art.
Movimientos que son tratados con gran inters en la Coleccin del
IVAM. La fotografa, el fotomontaje y el diseo grfico, son integrados totalmente, tanto en la Coleccin como en las exposiciones temporales que se van presentando, situndolos en el lugar que les corresponde en la historia del arte. Obras que son realizadas por las figuras
ms emblemticas de las vanguardias artsticas y de una serie de autores muy poco estudiados, que dotan a esta coleccin de un carcter
diferente y exclusivo y que son de una gran ayuda para comprender
la situacin actual del arte contemporneo. Autores situados desde el
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marcando su continuidad en la obra de artistas de generaciones posteriores que tambin estn presentes en esta Coleccin.
La imagen, como el tiempo, no se puede capturar, pero s arrancar de
su momento y transferirlo a una esencia distinta de continuidad; por
ello se hace muy necesario que una disciplina expresiva como la fotografa forme categricamente parte de las numerosas variantes que el
arte contemporneo nos brinda.
La literalidad de la imagen, su retrica, su simbolismo, pueden
sumergir al arte fotogrfico en campos narrativos que expresan realidades subjetivas para convertirse en ideales artsticos que superen
cmodamente las formas socioculturales de la vida cotidiana.
Toda experiencia est impregnada de lenguaje, de modo que resulta
prcticamente imposible tener un acceso a la realidad que no est filtrado lingsticamente. Si entendemos la fotografa en su alcance simblico-lingstico, como valor sintetizado para sus creadores y como
icono liberador y transformador para los espectadores, debe ser contemplada desde el seno de una retroalimentacin continua.
Segn afirma Mario Benedetti: A travs de las edades y de las tcnicas, la imagen se ha ido introduciendo en la poesa. Y esto ha ocurrido cuando fue dibujo, diseo, pintura, o simple abstraccin. Tambin
cuando es fotografa. Como Diane Arbus proclam, la fotografa es
un secreto acerca de un secreto, por lo que podramos agregar que es
una revelacin acerca de una revelacin.
Y la fotografa no lleva trazas de disminuir, todo lo contrario, ya que
fotografiar comporta un acto excesivamente provocador para el
usuario, algo que nunca ha sido capaz de conseguir mediante ningn
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La fotografa recapitula ambas maneras tradicionales de oponer radicalmente el yo y el mundo. Se ve la fotografa como una manifestacin
aguda del yo individualizado, dominando la realidad, o bien es concebida como un medio de encontrar un lugar en el mundo abrumador y
extrao, porque permite entablar con l una relacin distante, soslayando las exigencias del yo. Pero entre la defensa de la fotografa como
un medio superior de expresin del yo y el elogio de la fotografa como
un medio superior de poner el yo al servicio de la realidad, no existe
una diferencia tan grande como podra creerse. Ambas presuponen
que la fotografa proporciona un sistema nico de desnudamientos, o
sea, que nos muestra la realidad como no la habamos visto antes.
Ningn instrumento, salvo la cmara, es capaz de registrar esas reacciones tan complejas y efmeras y expresar toda la majestuosidad del
momento. Ninguna mano puede expresarlo, pues la mente no puede
retener la verdad exacta de un momento el tiempo suficiente para
permitir que los lentos dedos consignen vastas masas de detalles relacionados. Los impresionistas se afanaron vanamente para lograrlo.
Pues, consciente o inconscientemente, lo que procuraban demostrar
con sus efectos de luz era la verdad del momento; el impresionista
siempre ha intentado fijar el prodigio del aqu y ahora.
Pero los efectos momentneos de luz se les escapaban mientras se
dedicaban a analizar; y su impresin, por lo general, no es ms que
una serie de impresiones superpuestas. Stieglitz fue ms atinado.
Acudi directamente al instrumento fabricado para l.
La realidad misma empieza a ser entendida como una suerte de escritura que hay que descodificar. Una infinidad de capas superpuestas,
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La fotografa es conductora de la comunicacin y puede ser producida con muchas finalidades. El fotgrafo Brassai esclarece con lucidez
este aspecto: La fotografa tiene un destino doble [...] es hija del
mundo aparente, del instante vivido, y como tal guardar siempre
algo del documento histrico o cientfico sobre ella; mas ella es tambin hija del rectngulo, un producto de las bellas artes, el cual requiri el rellenamiento agradable o armonioso del espacio con seales en
blanco y negro o en color. En este sentido, la fotografa tendr siempre un pie en el campo de las artes grficas y nunca ser susceptible
de escapar de este hecho.
En el caso del fotoperiodismo, la foto en prensa, en mayor grado que
el texto escrito, aparece con una gran fuerza de objetividad, siempre
y cuando se obedezcan los cdigos deontolgicos del profesional y lo
subjetivo no se implante en su emisin fotogrfica. Si una informacin escrita puede omitir o deformar la verdad de un hecho, la foto
aparece como el testimonio fidedigno y transparente del acontecimiento y la fotografa produce una impresin de la representacin
de la realidad, siendo siempre una alusin obligatoria a ella.
Es decir, podemos afirmar que la fotografa es pareja del texto y
ambos se complementan. Al fotoperiodismo le cabe el papel de informar con lenguaje propio de los acontecimientos sociopolticos y econmicos de la sociedad y siendo un medio de comunicacin no verbal
contiene gran credibilidad junto al pblico, porque capta el momento del hecho.
No obstante, todo el trabajo ejecutado por el reportero grfico en
crear y demostrar un fragmento del tiempo y del espacio para infor-
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manipuladas que se publicaron en tiempos de Stalin y las ha agrupado en el libro El comisario desaparece, editado por Metropolitan Books,
donde demuestra el arte de la falsificacin y los mtodos macabros de
trucar la historia.
Stalin no slo borr personajes de sus fotografas, lo hizo tambin de
la vida.
Algunos marcos de tiempo, como este final de siglo, inducen previsiones y profecas tambin sobre el destino de la fotografa. No obstante,
parecen importantes algunas reflexiones sobre fotografa y futuro,
que corresponde a la reflexin sobre la relacin entre una sucesin de
invenciones tcnicas y estticas, portadoras de ideologas que han operado de forma distinta en cada contexto histrico-cultural.
Con esta perspectiva dinmica se debe considerar la fotografa electrnica, tambin denominada digital, cuya razn de ser se sita en la
aceleracin e integracin de procesos de comunicacin.
Es obvio que el periodismo no puede renunciar a una innovacin tecnolgica de este porte, pero su uso impone cuidados ticos mnimos,
como el de archivar la escena original en un banco de datos bajo la
firma de solamente para lectura.
Uno de los mritos de los fotgrafos, que ha sobrevivido hasta la
cmara digital, fue la de poder decir que ninguna foto se puede desmentir, al contrario de declaraciones anotadas o grabadas por los
reporteros.
La fotografa implica tambin la exposicin del objeto fotografiado y
en la sociedad actual donde el individualismo da el tono principal, las
personas se cierran cada vez ms detrs de las pantallas de los orde-
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nacidas de un proceso absolutamente distinto al fotogrfico. El motivo principal para esta discriminacin es el aspecto que les aporta su
componente estructural, el pixel que forma la imagen.
Estas imgenes digitales tienen, por tanto, un incuestionable valor,
ms all de sus logros tcnicos o plsticos: sirven para que avancemos
en nuestro conocimiento sobre el hecho fotogrfico mismo. Son disparadores de reflexiones sobre la propia naturaleza de la fotografa.
En este sentido diremos que las nuevas tecnologas han servido para
dar un vuelco radical a la esttica de la ltima dcada. La tecnologa
digital despoja a la fotografa de su legado de verdad y rompe definitivamente esa conexin existencial, hasta ahora indisoluble con su
referente. Las nuevas imgenes sintticas parecen haberse centrado
especialmente en la idea de la prdida de lo real, puesto que la propia realidad ha comenzado a ser reemplazada por el mundo de la
simulacin digital.
Tambin el fotomontaje ha acompaado desde sus orgenes a la historia de la fotografa con el propsito de descontextualizar de su
entorno diversos fragmentos de realidad para formar una nueva realidad inventada. Si a travs del fotomontaje la realidad fotogrfica es
falseada intencionadamente para transmitir un mensaje visual claro,
no debera sorprendernos, en principio, que esto mismo se haga ahora
abiertamente con los nuevos procedimientos digitales.
La tecnologa digital aporta una serie de caractersticas comunes a
todos los medios tradicionales de produccin de imgenes y, a su vez,
su naturaleza la hace diferente a todos ellos. Se tratara, pues, ms
bien de una disciplina hbrida que ya no nos permite hablar de lo
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siglo XIX Alexander von Humboldt, que seal el inters que desde
un punto de vista geogrfico podan tener las imgenes de la naturaleza y del paisaje ofrecidas por la literatura y la pintura), podemos
observar que hasta el movimiento romntico que comienza en el siglo
XVIII no existe una presencia del paisaje como tema de composicin en
s mismo en la pintura, ni en la literatura, ni en el resto de las disciplinas artsticas. Dicho de otra manera, podramos afirmar que el ser
humano, en cuanto ser social, ha vivido de espaldas al paisaje cuanto
ms metido se encontraba en l. La fotografa se hace cargo de esa
carencia e intenta ponerle freno con su decidida apuesta por plasmar
la naturaleza de las cosas.
Pueblos y ciudades, tanto en edificios antiguos como modernos, estimulan la creacin de imgenes fotogrficas singulares. Las formas y
lneas de la arquitectura urbana constituyen por ellas mismas, interesantes imgenes. Las lneas rectas de la arquitectura moderna constituyen muchas formas geomtricas que pueden contrastarse con edificios de otra poca.
En la fotografa urbana, lo natural como lo artificial o el orden o el
caos, son temas muy habituales en esta clase de fotografa. Cuando la
luz escasea y se mezcla con escaparates, faros de coches, neones, ventanales, aumenta la sensacin del tpico frenes urbano.
El establecimiento de contrastes y comparaciones, son un buen procedimiento para reflejar lugares. Pueden albergar desde la simple
relacin entre barrios nuevos y viejos hasta el enfrentamiento de estilos de vida.
Otra aproximacin a la ciudad es fotografiar sus detalles humanos,
sin fotografiar directamente a los habitantes. Unas escaleras gastadas,
los nombres de los timbres, las pintadas en una pared, anuncios publicitarios, seales, sugieren actitudes y formas de vida. Todos estos
detalles resultan favorecidos si se observan juntos.
El enfrentamiento entre ambos sistemas de captura de imgenes nos
puede llevar a redescubrir la esencia de lo fotogrfico, alertndonos
sobre algunos hechos que no nos plantebamos, por su absoluta evidencia, y al mismo tiempo cuestionando algunas afirmaciones comunes. Si tratamos de analizar la fotografa prescindiendo de detalles
prcticos concretos, nos encontramos con que la esencia del proceso
est en la captura de un instante visual, mediante la cmara, sobre un
soporte fsico que permitir su almacenamiento y posteriormente portar una imagen bidimensional semejante a la que emita la escena.
Cada uno de estos elementos del proceso est aportando alguna de las
caractersticas principales de la fotografa: el corte temporal del
momento de captura, la formacin de la imagen mediante la luz que
emana de la escena, la perspectiva de la cmara oscura junto con las
alteraciones que introducen las lentes, la bidimensionalidad del
soporte y las caractersticas de ste que se sumarn a la imagen final:
material, textura, caractersticas que la forman, etc. stos son elementos primordiales en la estructura de lo fotogrfico que definen sus
caractersticas especficas como medio y lo diferencian de otros
medios prximos en alguna de sus fases.
La alteracin del soporte que registra la imagen fotogrfica no altera
fundamentalmente el proceso, no anula su condicin de sistema fotogrfico (aunque s puede alterar el aspecto de estas imgenes) y nos
lleva hacia uno u otro de los casos de fotografa posibles, as como el
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uso de lpiz, pluma o bolgrafo no aleja una imagen del campo del
dibujo. Se trata de procedimientos especficos, todos ellos dentro del
mbito legtimo de lo fotogrfico.
Para ir concluyendo este anlisis diremos que la fotografa, en su aparicin en la historia, conmueve muchos de los fundamentos de la cultura de su poca, proporcionando elementos decisivos para la modificacin del significado de conceptos tradicionales, tales como: visin,
comprensin, conocimiento (ciencia) e imitacin, representacin, realismo (arte), con la perspectiva como punto medial entre arte y ciencia.
La importancia sociocultural de la fotografa, el dominio de los materiales en fotografa, pasa necesariamente por el conocimiento de estas
cuestiones. Por ello, desde estas breves reflexiones, el conocimiento de
aquellos aspectos de la tradicin, tanto en el campo de las ciencias
como en el de las artes, que pueden ser puestos en relacin con la fotografa, son de conocimiento obligado y, en consecuencia, es necesario
entender el arte actual.
A la fotografa le ha llevado un largo tiempo establecerse como un
medio de comunicacin que provocase algn tipo de estudio crtico
serio. Los fotgrafos del siglo XIX escribieron relativamente poco
acerca de sus propios trabajos y este medio no haba sido todava
tomado muy en serio por los historiadores del arte. Durante la primera mitad de este siglo, fue Alfred Stieglitz quien, aparte de dejarnos
su obra como fotgrafo/pionero, ech las bases para que la fotografa
fuera aceptada como una forma de arte mayor. Pero no fue hasta los
aos sesenta cuando alcanz lo que podramos llamar una respetabilidad acadmica.
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El modo esttico, pues la imagen est destinada a complacer al espectador, a proporcionarle sensaciones especficas. Ciertamente la fotografa participa de los tres modos de relacin con el mundo y aunque
el modo epistmico pueda resultar el ms accesible al procesamiento
documental clsico, lo cierto es que la dimensin simblica y la
dimensin esttica no deben ser soslayadas ya que muchas fotografas cambian por diversas razones su modo de relacin, puesto que despus de 150 aos de existencia, la fotografa contina en su incipiente
evolucin.
Las imgenes del tiempo capturadas en la Coleccin del IVAM, su
literalidad, su retrica, su simbolismo, sumergen al arte fotogrfico,
de ah que, bajo estas premisas aqu expuestas en campos narrativos,
expresen realidades transformadas en ideales artsticos que superan
cmodamente las formas socioculturales de la vida cotidiana.
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MENSAJESSINCDIGO
FERNANDO CASTRO FLREZ
Moholy-Nagy seal que los analfabetos del futuro sern los que no
sepan nada de fotografa, ms que los que no sepan escribir.2
La cmara fue inventada por Fox Talbot en 1839. Tan slo treinta
aos despus de su invencin, como un artilugio de lujo para la elite,
la fotografa ya estaba siendo utilizada en los archivos policiales, en
los informes de guerra, en los reconocimientos militares, en la pornografa, en la documentacin enciclopdica, en los lbumes familiares, en las postales, en los informes antropolgicos (muchas veces,
como en el caso de los indios de los Estados Unidos, acompaada por
1. Jacques Lacan: Qu es un cuadro?, en Los Cuatro Conceptos Fundamentales del Psicoanlidis. El Seminario 11. Ed. Paids, Buenos Aires 1987, p. 113.
2. Aument la popularidad de la fotografa, especialmente en Alemania, donde Moholy-Nagy comentaba, con palabras ya clebres, que los analfabetos del futuro sern los que no sepan
nada de fotografa, ms que los que no conozcan el arte de escribir; la fotografa iba a contribuir al lenguaje visual universal, hasta el punto de que en el futuro las cmaras seran de uso
tan comn como las mquinas de escribir (Ian Jeffrey: La Fotografa. Ed. Destino, Barcelona 1999, p. 111).
3. John Berger: Usos de la fotografa, en Mirar. Ed. Hermann Blume, Madrid 1987, p. 51.
4. Cfr. Carl G. Jung: Ain. Contribucin a los simbolismos del s mismo. Ed. Paids, Barcelona 1989, p. 22. Plinio indica que la pintura naci cuando por vez primera se cerc con lnea la
sombra de un hombre: signo tanto de la ausencia cuanto de la presencia, origen que, a pesar de todo, se aleja. La historia del arte es la dialctica de esa dificultad para materializar un instante del deseo; cfr. Victor I. Stoichita: Breve historia de la sombra. Ed. Siruela, Madrid 1999, p. 9.
5. Geoffrey Batchen: Arder en deseos. La concepcin de la fotografa. Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 2004, p. 121.
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Walter Benjamin, en su ensayo sobre Lesskow, caracteriza al narrador como alguien que trae la noticia de la lejana, tal como se refera
al que ha viajado de retorno a casa, con la noticia del pasado que
prefiere al confiarse al sedentario. Pero, es la misma experiencia la
que nos dice que el arte de la narracin est tocando a su fin,6 como si
fuera ya imposible intercambiar experiencias, sentarse a gozar de la
escucha. Acaso faltan personas capaces de dar consejos, esto es, de
transmitir esa sabidura que est entretejida en los materiales de la
vida. El relato se aproxima a su fin porque el aspecto pico de la verdad declina. Cada historia llama a su continuacin, obliga al que
escucha a retener lo dicho. Cuanto ms olvidado de s est el que
escucha, tanto ms profundamente se impregna su memoria. En
este tiempo en el que, segn el autor de Direccin nica, ya no se teje
ni se hila mientras alguien cuenta algo memorable, desaparece esa
red artesanal de la palabra. Conviene recordar que la huella del
narrador queda adherida a la narracin como las del alfarero a la
superficie de la vasija de barro; tiende a comenzar su historia con
precisiones sobre las circunstancias en las que sta le fue referida, o
bien la presenta llanamente como experiencia propia. No se trata
meramente de la desaparicin de un gnero literario, si tal cosa
hubiera sido en algn momento, lo ms importante es que ha cambiado el rostro de la muerte, aquella experiencia lmite a la que prestaba obsesiva atencin el que eleva la voz. Falta la paciencia que permita arrancar imgenes del torbellino que a veces se denomina
escritura del desastre. Valery expresa nostlgicamente la certeza
de que antao haba paciencia para actuar conforme haca la naturaleza: miniaturas, marfiles, extrema y elaboradamente tallados,
piedras llevadas a la perfeccin al ser pulidas y estampadas, trabajos
en laca o pintura producida por la superposicin de finas capas
translcidas, obras surgidas del tiempo en el que el tiempo no contaba. Sophie Calle realiza obras que, habitualmente, estn caracterizadas como relatos. El rasgo determinante de Calle es la explicitacin, el morboso placer de las evidencias: lo que los ciegos nombran
como bello tiene que ser reproducido, aunque sea para satisfaccin
de los que ya son capaces de ver. Hay que documentar todas las persecuciones, lo que inquieta tiene que ser exteriorizado, el control de
la libido es absoluto, impone la retrica de los acontecimientos, est
preocupada por lo que Barthes llam el efecto de realidad7 que
finalmente convierte a la vida en simulacro. En sentido preciso
Sophie Calle realiza novelas breves. Todo aquel que escucha una
historia, est en compaa del narrador, pero el lector de una novela est a solas. Debemos a Lukcs una clarificacin fundamental, al
ver en la novela el alma fundamental de lo aptrida, los acontecimientos carecen de msica y la experiencia vivida ha sido sustituida
por el problema pattico del sentido de la vida. Las narraciones de
Sophie Calle afectan a un espectador al que mantienen a distancia,
leyendo el aparente desvelamiento de la intimidad. Pero todas esas
imgenes de gentes que son invitadas a dormir, espionaje duplicado,
persecuciones, intrusismo de la percepcin, relatos de obras de arte
robadas (memoria de su aura), tumbas de los seres queridos, enterradas a su vez por la accin geolgica, son autntica exterioridad.
El misterio, la pasin, las pulsiones estn negadas meticulosamente,
el clculo ha generado estas fotografas altamente retorizadas. La
materia fundamental para Sophie Calle es la experiencia, lo que
surge en los merodeos por la calle, las narraciones que estn vinculadas al pasar de las cosas que pasan: es prcticamente su vida lo que
la artista pone habitualmente en juego, en un impresionante despliegue de dispositivos hiperreales, o tal vez ya directamente hiperficcionales, emparentados a veces con la idea ltima de lo que se
dira un improbable lbum de fotos y que posiblemente tiene que
ver bastante ms con el autorretrato que con la autobiografa: el despliegue de toda una teora de la construccin de las figuras del yo.8
Efectivamente, edifica una identidad que es puro andamiaje, confirma que el concepto es la necrpolis de la intuicin, bloquea lo trgico, ese suelo o abismo de la palabra tejida en la experiencia compartida. El otro, la figura del deseo, es tambin el motor del conflicto.
6. Cfr. Walter Benjamin: El narrador, en Para una crtica de la violencia y otros ensayos. Iluminaciones IV. Ed. Taurus, Madrid 1991, p. 112.
7. Cfr. Roland Barthes: El efecto de realidad, en El susurro del lenguaje. Ms all de la palabras y la escritura. Ed. Paids, Barcelona 1987.
8. Una incierta teora del personaje implcita de algn modo en las autobiografas y en los autorretratos nos lleva a pensar en la posibilidad de construccin no ya de un personaje
sino, casi, de la persona misma, como si la artista, a partir de experiencias y faltas, construyese una imagen pblica de s misma a partir de sus necesidades e intenciones, es decir, como
si construyese su propia biografa a travs de los dispositivos artsticos que estn a su alcance, e invirtiendo no tanto los trminos del hecho como el orden de los acontecimientos: intrusa
de su propia intimidad, reveladora de sus propios secretos, Sophie Calle se expone a s misma como s fuera otra persona que no tuviese nada que ver con ella: mecanismos de construccin del yo en conexin con algo previo (un modelo, un polo de identificacin, un yo anterior) (Manel Clot: Figuras de la identidad, en Sophie Calle. Relatos, Fundacin la Caixa,
Madrid 1996, p. 20).
32
Se ha convertido ya en un comentario comn decir que no podramos pasar un da sin ver una fotografa. Estamos rodeados de vallas
publicitarias, fotos de prensa, portadas de revistas, escaparates y carteles de todo tipo. Pero entre todas estas variantes de soporte hay un
tipo especial de fotografa, ms apremiante y ms ntima: son las fotos
que llevamos en nuestras carteras, que colocamos en aparadores y
repisas, que reunimos en lbumes y pegamos en nuestros pasaportes,
pases de autobs o tarjetas estudiantiles. Son imgenes de nosotros
mismos, nuestra familia, nuestros amigos; retratos cuyo significado y
valor reside en innumerables intercambios y rituales sociales que
ahora pareceran incompletos sin la fotografa.12
Todos podemos hacer fotos, todos deseamos fijar los rostros de los que
queremos. Por fin, gracias a la fotografa, se poda hacer eso de
forma directa.13
Tenemos que recordar que la fotografa supuso la crisis imparable del
retrato en miniatura,14 siendo algo que posibilitaba tanto fijar la imagen del individuo (dar cuenta de su importancia) cuanto, como
sucede con la popularizacin de la tarjeta de visita, colaborar a la
constitucin de la clase media.15 Nadar, que no cabe duda conoca
9. Ella [Sophie Calle] decidi seguirle [Henri B. un hombre con el que mantiene una breve conversacin en Pars en la que le dice que va a viajar pronto a Venecia] a Italia y por las calles
venecianas, sin que l lo supiera, documentando el inesperado periplo al que l, sin advertirlo, la condujo, o mediante fotografas y notas. Para realizar una obra del siguiente ao, El hotel,
Calle entr a trabajar de camarera en un hotel de Venecia. Durante la limpieza diaria de las habitaciones, se dedic a fotografiar los objetos personales de sus moradores provisionales,
descubriendo e imaginando sus posibles identidades. Abri maletas, ley diarios y documentos, inspeccion ropa sucia y papeleras, fotografiando sistemticamente cada una de sus intrusiones y tomando notas que seran publicadas y exhibidas. Las obras de arte de Calle funden realidad y ficcin, exhibicionismo y voyeurismo, performance y observacin. Se consume por
los escenarios que ella misma crea y que se sitan al borde de la prdida de control, fracasan, permanecen inacabados o toman giros inesperados. La importancia que el guin tiene en su
arte qued de manifiesto en su colaboracin con el escritor Paul Auster. En su novela Leviatn (1992), Auster crea un personaje llamado Maria que est basado en Calle (Charlotte Cotton:
The Photograph as Contemporary Art. Thames and Hudson, Londres 2004, p. 23).
10. Situacin ferozmente dispersa, donde se mantiene a toda costa la doble negacin sin la cual no habra historia: lo visto ignora que lo ven (para que no lo ignorara, hara falta que comenzara a ser un poco sujeto), y su ignorancia permite que el voyeur se ignore como voyeur (Christian Metz: El significante imaginario. Psicoanlisis y cine. Ed. Paids, Barcelona 2001, p. 98).
11. Bayard se situ intencionadamente en la posicin que en otra fotografa ocupaba una estatuilla de Antnoo, el hermoso joven que, segn la leyenda romana, se ahog para prolongar
la vida de su amante el emperador Adriano (Geoffrey Batchen: Arder en deseos. La concepcin de la fotografa. Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 2004, p. 163).
12. John Tagg: El peso de la representacin. Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 2005, p. 51.
13. En 1839, cuando Daguerre hizo pblico su proceso fotogrfico, ste hizo hincapi en su accesibilidad potencial a un amplio pblico y en su naturaleza automtica dos factores que
fueron considerados inseparables de la objetividad imaginada de la tcnica. Cualquiera, afirm, puede tomar las visiones ms detalladas en unos minutos, mediante un proceso qumico y fsico que otorga a la naturaleza la capacidad de reproducirse. La concepcin ideolgica de la fotografa como un molde directo y natural de la realidad estuvo presente desde
un principio y, casi de forma inmediata, su atractivo fue aprovechado en la creacin de retratos (John Tagg: El peso de la representacin. Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 2005, p. 59).
14. La magia del retrato en miniatura fue captada por la cmara fotogrfica. El daguerrotipo se acercaba mucho al aspecto liliputiense del retrato pintado en miniatura, y era ms barato y ms parecido, y adems se ejecutaba de manera relativamente ms fcil, todo lo cual forzaba al pintor, si quera sobrevivir, a ayudarse del daguerrotipo en su trabajo o a pasarse con
armas y bagajes al nuevo mtodo (Aarn Scharf: Arte y fotografa. Ed. Alianza, Madrid 1994, p. 45). En 1936, Gisle Freund analiza, en La fotografa en Francia en el siglo XIX, el ascenso
de la fotografa relacionndolo con el de la burguesa y con la produccin de retratos en miniatura sobre marfil; su descripcin del fisiotrazo como un eslabn entre el retrato en miniatura y la toma fotogrfica tiene todo el valor de un descubrimiento (Walter Benjamin: Carta de Pars. Pintura y fotografa, en Sobre la fotografa. Ed. Pre-textos, Valencia 2004, p. 78).
15. Gracias a la invencin de la tarjeta de visita se produjo otro cuerpo, distinto al que defina como individual el retrato de daguerrotipo y de calotipo: el cuerpo colectivo de la clase
media. La historia convencional afirma que la fotografa se invent para satisfacer la demanda por retratos baratos de una creciente clase media. Los historiadores marxistas discuten este
supuesto y sostienen que la clase media de mediados del siglo XIX no era una entidad coherente con necesidades claramente definidas, sino ms bien una serie de cambiantes agrupaciones que se formaron tras objetivos comunes o como resultado de creencias y prcticas compartidas. La tarjeta de visita, argumentaban estos historiadores, fue una de las prcticas que definan a la nueva burguesa. Por otra parte, producan imgenes tan baratas y comunes que se acumularon hasta formar un retrato colectivo de esa clase (John Pultz: La fotografa y el cuerpo. Ed. Akal, Madrid 2003, p. 17).
33
pata; tal vez Lewis Hine quera una mirada compasiva para sus fotografas de nios condenados a trabajar, en una melancola frontal. La
fotografa de un rostro tomado de frente no siempre es, ni mucho
menos, el lugar de reconocimiento de una humanidad compartida.
Muy a menudo es tambin el de una irreductible extraeza! Desde
sus inicios, la fotografa ha agudizado las expectativas y las angustias
vinculadas al tema del doble.21
Sabemos de sobra que los fotgrafos inevitablemente imponen pautas
a los modelos, ajustan el cuerpo del otro a un sistema socio-simblico.
Posar es adoptar una postura que se supone que no es natural, colocarse de cierta forma teatral, incluso con manifiesta incomodidad,
hacerse presentable, simulando aquella naturalidad, reclamando respeto.22 En el instante del encuentro de la cosa real ante el ojo se produce la inmovilidad, la detencin de la pose, esa actitud estirada que
luego nos sorprende o, mejor, hace que no podamos reconocernos.
La Fotografa seala Barthes transformaba al sujeto en objeto e
incluso si cabe en objeto de museo: para tomar los primeros retratos
(hacia 1840) era necesario someter al sujeto a largar poses bajo una
cristalera a pleno sol; devenir objeto haca sufrir como una operacin
quirrgica; se invent entonces un aparato llamado apoyacabezas,
especie de prtesis invisible al objetivo que sostena y mantena al
cuerpo en su pasar a la inmovilidad: este apoyacabezas era el pedestal
de la estatua en que yo me iba a convertir, el cors de mi esencia imaginaria.23 Puede que sea cierto que posar es ponerse en relacin con
el falo, aunque, paradjicamente, el sentimiento de estar arrobado
provenga de la presencia de la madre. Las fotografas, literalmente,
nos dejan petrificados, como si volviera aquel horror clsico que surga
16. Testimonio de Nadar en un pleito judicial, recogido en Jean Prinet y Antoinette Dilasser: Nadar. Ed. Armand Colin, Pars 1966, pp. 115-116.
17. Cfr. Rafael Argullol: Autorretrato: Refljate a ti mismo, en El retrato Ed. Galaxia Gutenberg, Crculo de Lectores, Barcelona 2004, pp. 43-54.
18. Con la espectacular publicacin sobre el daguerrotipo, la obra de Bayard qued totalmente dejada de lado. El mismo Bayard coment sus desgracias con una fotografa fechada en
1840. Se le ve all semidesnudo, reclinado sobre una pared como si estuviera muerto. Al dorso de la copia escribi: El cuerpo que veis aqu es el de Monsieur Bayard... La Academia, el
Rey y todos aquellos que han visto sus imgenes las han admirado, igual que vosotros. La admiracin le report prestigio, pero no le dio un chavo. El Gobierno, que tanto dio a Daguerre,
dijo que nada en absoluto, podra hacer por Bayard, y el infortunado decidi ahogarse (Beaumont Newhall: Historia de la fotografa. Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 2002, p. 25).
19. Charo Crego: Geografa de una pennsula. La representacin del rostro en la pintura. Ed. Abada, Madrid 2004, p. 13.
20. Schopenhauer sealaba que el hombre interior es un retrato del interior, y el rostro una expresin y revelacin de la totalidad del carcter, es en s una presuncin bastante probable,
y por lo tanto bastante segura, corroborada como est por el hecho de que las gentes estn siempre ansiosas de ver a cualquiera que haya alcanzado la fama [...] La fotografa [...] nos ofrece la ms completa satisfaccin de nuestra curiosidad.
21. Serge Tisseron: El misterio de la cmara lcida. Fotografa e inconsciente, Ed. Universidad de Salamanca, 2000, p. 81.
22. A travs de la preocupacin por rectificar la actitud y ponerse el mejor traje, a travs de la negativa a dejarse sorprender con la ropa de todos los das y en una tarea cotidiana, es la
misma intencin la que se manifiesta. Posar es respetarse y exigir respeto (Pierre Bourdieu: Un arte medio. Ensayo sobre los usos sociales de la fotografa, Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2003,
p. 143).
23. Roland Barthes: La cmara lcida. Ed. Paids, Barcelona 1990, p. 45.
34
ba, como dice Benjamin, la vista, all todo estaba dispuesto para
durar: la larga inmovilidad de los modelos haca del instante algo
habitable.29 En ltima instancia, la fotografa y, particularmente, el
retrato debe ser silencioso.30
A veces hay que buscar la belleza, en vez de en el canon, en lo marginal, en la gente annima, mientras otros rostros son protegidos de la
crudeza de la cmara.31 La fotografa nos muestra una realidad anterior, algo que, en verdad, no puede tocarse, que aunque da la impresin de idealidad no se la percibe nunca como algo puramente ilusorio: es el documento de una realidad de la que nos hallamos fuera de
alcance.32 Tenemos grandes dificultades para enfocar lo cercano o a
lo mejor no queremos contemplarlo; los ojos de algunos sujetos retratados miran a otro lado,33 hurtan el apstrofe de su locura. En las
24. Las figuras de pesadilla, como las diosas de la venganza, sedientas y manchadas de sangre, se confundan, en la nublada mente de quien las sufra, con la Gorgona. Su poder fulminante resida en su mirada, al igual que en la tupida maraa de serpientes que aureolaban su cabeza. El imprudente que la miraba directamente a los ojos mora petrificado. La mirada
de la Gorgona, como una emanacin maligna, converta a la vctima en una estatua de piedra (Pedro Azara: El ojo y la sombra. Una mirada al retrato en Occidente. Ed. Gustavo Gili,
Barcelona 2002, p. 81).
25. Como todo el mundo sabe, los pueblos primitivos temen que la cmara los despoje de una parte de su ser. En las memorias que public en 1900 al cabo de una larga vida, Nadar refiere que Balzac tambin sufra de un vago temor de que lo fotografiaran. Su explicacin, de acuerdo con Nadar, era que todo cuerpo en su estado natural estaba conformado por una sucesin de imgenes espectrales superpuestas en capas infinitas, envueltas en pelculas infinitesimales. [...] Como el hombre nunca fue capaz de crear, es decir, hacer algo material a partir de
una aparicin, de algo impalpable, o de fabricar un objeto a partir de nada, cada operacin daguerriana iba por tanto a apresar, separar y consumir una de las capas del cuerpo que se focalizaba (Susan Sontag: Sobre la fotografa. Ed. Edhasa, Barcelona 1981, p. 168).
26. Cfr. Pierre Bordieu: Un arte medio. Ensayo sobre los usos sociales de la fotografa. Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 2003, p. 64.
27. La incapacidad para recordar tal vez sea en s misma una forma de memoria. Vivamos sin nombres. Haba ciertas fuerzas elementales el calor, el fro, el dolor, el cario que eran
reconocibles; y tambin algunas personas. Pero no haba ni nombres ni verbos. Incluso el primer pronombre personal era ms el desarrollo de una conviccin que un hecho. Y debido a
esa carencia no existan los recuerdos (como algo distinto del funcionamiento de la memoria). Alguna vez hemos vivido esa experiencia de la ausencia de la palabra; una experiencia sin
remiendos, en la que todo es continuo. El sueo ltimo de un lenguaje ideal, un lenguaje que lo diga todo simultneamente, empieza quiz, con el recuerdo de ese estado carente de recuerdos (John Berger: Y nuestros rostros, mi vida, breves como fotos. Ed. Hermann Blume, Madrid 1986, p. 32).
28. Pero es en su dimensin temporal donde se revela toda la paradoja de la fotografa popular. Corte instantneo en el mundo visible, la fotografa proporciona el medio de disolver la
realidad slida y compacta de la percepcin cotidiana en una infinidad de perfiles fugaces como imgenes de sueo, de fijar momentos absolutamente nicos de la situacin recproca de
las cosas, de captar, como lo ha mostrado Walter Benjamin, los aspectos imperceptibles, en tanto instantneos del mundo percibido, de detener los gestos humanos en el absurdo de un
presente de estatuas de sal. De hecho, lejos de darse como vocacin especfica, la captacin de los instantes crticos en los que el mundo tranquilizador oscila, la prctica comn, contra toda
otra expectativa, parece encarnizarse, por todos los medios a sus alcance, en despojar a la fotografa de su poder de desconcierto: la fotografa popular elimina el accidente o el aspecto que
disuelve lo real, volvindolo temporal. No fijando nunca sino los instantes que su solemnidad salva del transcurso del tiempo y captando slo personajes instalados, inmviles, en la inmutabilidad del plano, pierde todo su poder de corrosin (Pierre Bourdieu: Un arte medio. Ensayo sobre los usos sociales de la fotografa. Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 2003, p. 138).
29. La sntesis de la expresin obtenida gracias a la larga inmovilidad del modelo, afirma Orlik de las primeras fotografas, es el motivo principal de que stas, adems de su sencillez,
pareja a la de los retratos bien dibujados o pintados, produzcan en el espectador un efecto ms penetrante y duradero que las fotografas ms recientes. El procedimiento mismo induca
a los modelos a vivir, no fuera, sino dentro del instante (Walter Benjamin: Pequea historia de la fotografa, en Sobre la fotografa. Ed. Pre-textos, Valencia 2004, p. 31).
30. La fotografa debe ser silenciosa [...]: no se trata de una cuestin de discrecin, sino de msica. La subjetividad absoluta slo se consigue mediante un estado, un esfuerzo de silencio
(cerrar los ojos hacer hablar la imagen en el silencio) (Roland Barthes: La cmara lcida. Nota sobre la fotografa. Ed. Paids, Barcelona 1990, p. 104).
31. Para los fotgrafos no hay, en definitiva, ninguna diferencia ninguna decisin esttica importante entre el esfuerzo por embellecer el mundo y el esfuerzo contrario por arrancarle la
mscara. Aun los fotgrafos que desdeaban retocar sus retratos un sello de honor para los retratistas ambiciosos de Nadar en adelante procuraban proteger al modelo de la mirada implacable de la cmara. Y una de las tentativas tpicas de los retratistas, profesionalmente protectores de caras de famosas (como la de Garbo) que son de veras ideales, es la busca de caras reales,
generalmente seleccionadas entre los annimos, los pobres, los socialmente indefensos, los viejos, los locos, gente indiferente (o impotente) ante las agresiones de la cmara (Susan Sontag: Sobre
la fotografa. Ed. Edhasa, Barcelona 1981, p. 114).
32. Julia Kristeva: El lenguaje, ese desconocido. Introduccin a la lingstica. Ed. Fundamentos, Madrid 1999, p. 320.
33. John Berger seala que en los cinco retratos que Gricault pint en La Salptrire, los ojos de los retratados miran a otro lado, de soslayo: No porque estn viendo algo distante o imaginado, sino porque ya se han acostumbrado a evitar todo lo cercano. Lo cercano provoca vrtigo porque las explicaciones ofrecidas no lo explican. Con cunta frecuencia nos encontramos hoy en los trenes, en los aparcamientos, en las colas de los centros comerciales con una mirada semejante, una mirada que se niega a enfocar lo cercano (John Berger: Un hombre desgreado, en El tamao de una bolsa. Ed. Taurus, Madrid 2004, p. 187).
35
34. Este sera el destino de la Fotografa: hacindome creer (es verdad: una vez de cuntas?) que he encontrado la verdadera fotografa total, realiza la inaudita confusin de la realidad
(Esto ha sido) con la verdad (Es esto!), se convierte al mismo tiempo en constativa y en exclamativa; lleva la efigie hasta ese punto de locura en que el afecto (el amor, la compasin, el duelo,
el mpetu, el deseo) es la garanta del ser. La Fotografa, en efecto, se acerca entonces a la locura, alcanza la loca verdad (Roland Barthes: La cmara lcida. Nota sobre la fotografa. Ed. Paids,
Barcelona 1990, p. 192).
35. La Fotografa remite siempre el corpus que necesito al cuerpo que veo, es el Particular absoluto, la Contingencia soberana, mate y elemental, el Tal (tal foto, y no la Foto), en resumidas cuentas, la Tuch, la Ocasin, el Encuentro, lo Real en su expresin infatigable (Roland Barthes: La cmara lcida. Nota sobre la fotografa. Ed. Paids, Barcelona 1990, p. 31).
36. Susan Sontag: Sobre la fotografa. Ed. Edhasa, Barcelona 1981, p. 26.
37. La Fotografa no rememora el pasado [...]. El efecto que produce en m no es la restitucin de lo abolido (por el tiempo, por la distancia), sino el testimonio de que lo que veo ha sido.
[...] la Fotografa tiene que ver con la resurreccin: no podemos acaso decir de ella lo mismo que los bizantinos decan de la imagen de Cristo impresa en el Sudario de Turn, que no estaba hecha por la mano del hombre, acheiropoietos? (Roland Barthes: La cmara lcida. Nota sobre la fotografa. Ed. Paids, Barcelona 1990, p. 145).
38. La ausencia asumida como ocasin del acto de figurar, como razn del retrato. La escenografa que da cuerpo a su invencin es el dispositivo sentimental: la imagen es la retencin
del ausente, de aquel que va a marcharse al extranjero (Jean-Cristophe Bailly: La llamada muda. Los retratos de El Fayum. Ed. Akal, Madrid 2001, p. 106).
39. Craig Owens: Posar en Jorge Ribalta (ed.): Debates posmodernos sobre fotografa. Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 2004, p. 212.
40. Imaginariamente, la Fotografa (aquella que est en mi intencin) representa ese momento ms sutil en que, a decir verdad, no soy ni sujeto ni objeto, sino ms bien un sujeto que se
siente devenir objeto: vivo entonces una microexperiencia de la muerte (del parntesis): me convierto verdaderamente en espectro (Roland Barthes: La cmara lcida. Nota sobre la fotografa. Ed. Paids, Barcelona 1990, p. 46).
41. Cfr. Ian Jeffrey: La Fotografa. Ed. Destino, Barcelona 1999, pp. 136-141.
42. Walter Benjamin recordaba el comentario de que Eugne Atget representaba las calles de Pars como si fueran escenarios de un crimen. Esta observacin sirve para poetizar un estilo inexpresivo y no expresionista, para fundir la nostalgia y el fro instrumental del detective. Volviendo la vista atrs, desde Benjamin hasta Atget, observamos la prdida del pasado a travs de las constantes alteraciones del presente urbano como forma de violencia contra la memoria, que el bohemio nostlgico resiste mediante actos de adquisicin solipsistas y pasivos. (El
poema de Baudelaire El cisne expresa en gran medida este sentimiento de prdida, de inminente desaparicin de lo conocido). Cito este ejemplo slo para plantear la pregunta del carcter afectivo del documental. La fotografa documental ha acumulado montaas de pruebas. Y sin embargo, en esta presentacin pictrica de la realidad cientfica y legislativa, a la vez
el gnero ha contribuido mucho al espectculo, a la excitacin de la retina, al voyeurismo, al terror, a la envidia y la nostalgia; y en cambio slo un poco a la comprensin crtica del mundo
(Allan Sekula: Desmantelar la modernidad, reinventar el documental. Notas sobre la poltica de la representacin, en Jorge Ribalta (ed.): Efecto real. Debates posmodernos sobre la fotografa. Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 2004, p. 41).
43. Greenberg consideraba las obras de Cartier-Bresson demasiado rgidas, artificiales, fras y pseudoartsticas mientras defenda las obras de Atget que era, en su opinin, humilde en
sus intenciones: No buscaba las vistas ms bellas; intentaba capturar la identidad de sus temas. [...] los signos y vestigios de la presencia humana, y no la presencia en s misma (Clement
Greenberg: The Cameras Glass Eye: Review of an Exhibition of Edward Weston, en The Collected Essays and Criticism. Vol. 4, Chicago University Press, 1993).
36
Resulta que aquella resistencia al analfabetismo con la que he comenzado implica tambin al propio fotgrafo que tiene qu saber que tipo
de toma culpable ha realizado, tiene que interpretar sus inquietantes
visiones: No en balde se ha comparado ciertas fotos de Atget con un
lugar del crimen. Pero no es cada rincn de nuestras ciudades un
lugar del crimen?; no es un criminal cada transente?No debe el
fotgrafo descendiente del augur y del arspice descubrir la culpa en
sus imgenes y sealar al culpable? No el que ignore la escritura, sino
el que ignore la fotografa, se ha dicho, ser el analfabeto del futuro.
Pero es que no es menos analfabeto un fotgrafo que no sabe leer sus
propias imgenes?No se convertir la leyenda en unos de los componentes esenciales de las fotos?44
Evans hicieran en el metro entre 1939 y 1941 con la cmara escondida entre sus ropas; este fotgrafo comprob que hay algo en la cara
de la gente cuando no sabe que se la est observando que nunca aparece en caso contrario. El fotgrafo convertido en una suerte de fisgn del delito.46
Podramos hablar de la aparicin de una lejana por cerca que se pueda
estar, pero ahora necesitamos, ms que el aura, el aire fotogrfico.47
Uno de los momentos decisivos del arte moderno es que se realiza al
pasar de la esttica del collage, originariamente pictrica, al fotomontaje experimental.48 Recordemos como Benjamin relacionaba los procedimientos del fotomontaje con el teatro pico de Brecht, en ambos
casos se trataba de impedir la ilusin del realismo y mostrar la vida
social, tal y como haca Heartfield, como algo que podamos desmontar y modificar. Aqu el derrumbamiento del aura supona la toma de
conciencia poltica. La naturaleza alegrica de la estrategia del montaje49 o la experimentacin con la cmara de los constructivistas rusos,
con su indagacin en torno a las posibilidades del espacio plstico,50
dejan una traza diferente que el arte de nuestro tiempo ha sido capaz
de asumir en pocas ocasiones.
Mirar escribe Pierre Bourdieu sin ser visto, sin ser visto mirando
y sin ser mirado, o lo que es lo mismo, a hurtadillas o, mejor an fotografiar de ese modo, es desposeer a los otros de su imagen. Al mirar
al que mira (o que fotografa), rectificando el aspecto, uno se pone a
mirar como pretende ser visto: ofrece la imagen la imagen de s
mismo. En una palabra, ante una mirada que fija e inmoviliza las
apariencias, adoptar la postura ms ceremonial, es reducir el riesgo al
ridculo y de torpeza y dar al otro una imagen de s preparada, es
decir, definida de antemano. Del mismo modo que el respeto por la
etiqueta, la frontalidad es un medio de que uno efecte por s mismo
su propia objetivacin: dar de s una imagen a partir de unas reglas es
una manera de impedir las normas de la propia percepcin.45 Un
ejemplo de ese mirar sin ser visto seran las fotografas que Walker
44. Walter Benjamin: Pequea historia de la fotografa en Discursos interrumpidos I. Ed. Taurus, Madrid 1973, p. 82.
45. Pierre Bourdieu: Un arte medio. Ensayo sobre los usos sociales de la fotografa. Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 2003, p. 146.
46. Decididamente las fotografas del metro de Evans realizadas a finales de la dcada de los treinta y principios de los cuarenta, son una clara evidencia de un dilogo afinado con los
mtodos empricos del investigador policial. Evans se presentaba como un flneur y al final de su vida compar su sensibilidad con la de Baudelaire. Aunque Walter Benjamin dijera que
no importa qu senda siga el flneur, todas le llevarn al delito, Evans evit su cita final (Allan Sekula: El cuerpo y el archivo, en Glria Picazo y Jorge Ribalta (eds.): Indiferencia y
singularidad. La fotografa y el pensamiento contemporneo. Ed. MACBA, Barcelona 1997, p. 182).
47. El aire (llamo as, a falta de otro trmino, la expresin de la verdad) es como el suplemento inflexible de la identidad, aquello que nos es dado gratuitamente, despojado de toda importancia: el aire expresa el sujeto en tanto que no se da importancia (Roland Barthes: La cmara lcida. Nota sobre la fotografa. Ed. Paids, Barcelona 1990, p. 184). Conviene recordar la
definicin benjaminiana del aura: Pero qu es propiamente el aura? Una trama muy especial de espacio y tiempo: la irrepetible aparicin de una lejana, por cerca que pueda encontrarse (Walter Benjamin: Pequea historia de la fotografa, en Sobre la fotografa. Ed. Pre-textos, Valencia 2004, p. 40).
48. La esttica del collage, primero pictrica, se aplic enseguida a la fotografa considerada a su vez como un fragmento de realidad, puncin de espacio y tiempo que fue experimentada por las vanguardias y, despus, explorada de forma sistemtica debido a sus infinitas posibilidades de montaje. El fotomontaje surge como prctica emblemtica de las vanguardias
de entreguerras, como experimentacin de una esttica del fragmento y del choque. Y tambin surge como la tentativa de hacer intercambiable la fotografa con la pintura, la fotografa
con el dibujo, la fotografa con la escritura (Dominique Baqu: La fotografa plstica. Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 2003, p. 192).
49. Cfr. Benjamin H.D. Buchloh: Procedimientos alegricos: apropiacin y montaje en el arte contemporneo, en Glria Picazo y Jorge Ribalta (eds.): Indiferencia y singularidad en el
pensamiento artstico contemporneo. Ed. MACBA, Barcelona 1997, p. 99.
50. La movilizacin de la cmara (por ejemplo, la vista de pjaro), el punto de vista mltiple y fragmentado y el prolfico periodo de laboratorio terico de los constructivistas rusos
ampliaron enormemente las posibilidades del espacio en el arte (Steve Yates: Valor del espacio: esbozo terico sobre el arte fotogrfico a finales del siglo XX, en Steve Yates (ed.): Poticas
del espacio. Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 2002, p. 299).
37
que trabaja con sus manos, utilizando medios desviados por comparacin con los del hombre de arte.51 Estoy refirindome a una actividad artstica que implica un arreglrselas uno con lo que tenga, la
necesidad de trabajar con un conjunto finito de instrumentos y de
materiales heterclitos, siendo la composicin el resultado contingente de todas las ocasiones que al artista se le ofrecen de renovar o
de enriquecer sus existencias, o de conservarlas con los residuos de
construcciones y de destrucciones anteriores.52 En el bricolage se
interviene con un sentido extremo de instrumentalidad, pero al
mismo tiempo que el sujeto rehace el inventario de las cosas que va
utilizar, trata ese material como si fuera un tesoro. Conviene tener
presente que eso elementos coleccionados estn preconstreidos; el
bricoleur, ciertamente, se dirige a una coleccin de residuos de obras
humanas, es decir, a un subconjunto de la cultura, operando no con
los conceptos, sino por medio de signos: se produce un desmantelamiento en el que los significados se transforman en significantes.53 A
esa dislocacin entre la estructura instrumental y el proyecto se aade
lo que los surrealistas llamaron azar objetivo. El sujeto, desprendido
de sus apegos, debe descubrir el significado donde pueda, sin renunciar al placer inmediato de la contemplacin de lo que son, estrictamente, arreglos artificiales. El juego irnico de similitud y diferencia, lo familiar y lo extrao, el aqu y el ahora (explcitos en el bricolage) son el proceso caracterstico de la modernidad global. Ahora
51. Claude Lvi-Strauss: El pensamiento salvaje. Ed. Fondo de Cultura Econmica, Mxico 1984, p. 35.
52. Claude Lvi-Strauss: El pensamiento salvaje. Ed. Fondo de Cultura Econmica, Mxico 1984, p. 37.
53. Boas indica que los universos mitolgicos estn destinados a ser desmantelados apenas formados, para que nuevos universos nazcan de sus fragmentos: Esta profunda observacin se
olvida de tener en cuenta, sin embargo, que, en esta incesante reconstruccin con ayuda de los mismos materiales, son siempre fines antiguos los que habrn de desempear el papel de
medios: los significados se truecan en significantes, y a la inversa (Claude Lvi-Strauss: El pensamiento salvaje. Ed. Fondo de Cultura Econmica, Mxico 1984, p. 41).
54. Claude Lvi-Strauss: El pensamiento salvaje. Ed. Fondo de Cultura Econmica, Mxico 1984, pp. 42-43.
55. En Malestar y Civilizacin, Freud da una metfora del inconsciente que podra aplicarse igualmente a esta prctica de desviacin: hace alusin a los capiteles y a los tambores de columnas que se encuentran encastrados en algunas construcciones rurales alrededor de emplazamientos antiguos. Los campesinos se apoderaron de ellos para su propio uso, mostrando as una
indiferencia insolente respecto a la arquitectura antigua. Los historiadores del arte y los arquelogos los denominan reempleos o spolia (despojo, pieza de botn), designando as la manera en que se sabe, desde hace mucho tiempo, utilizar lo antiguo como material en la acepcin fsica del trmino para hacer de ello algo nuevo. Podramos evocar igualmente los restos
diurnos, es decir, los recuerdos de la vspera, extrados de su contexto prosaico, y libremente asociados por el soador dentro de unas sntesis imaginarias inditas. Aqu, pues, el Deseo ha
vuelto a construir el cuerpo humano segn unos ritmos nuevos que siguen los mismos rodeos que Freud atribua a los fragmentos del sueo: Torcidos, troceados, reunidos como hielos
flotantes (Emmanuel Guigon: Historia del collage en Espaa. Ed. Museo de Teruel 1995, pp. 50-51).
56. Cfr. Claude Lvi- Strauss: El pensamiento salvaje. Ed. Fondo de Cultura Econmica, Mxico 1984, p. 55.
57. Jean-Clarence Lambert seala que en collage hay una violencia deliberada, que es el equivalente de otras violencias inconscientes, de otras violaciones de lo prohibido: no se interviene de manera inocente en la sintaxis, y el vocabulario del mundo (Jean-Clarence Lambert: Prague, le collage y Hoffmeinster, en Coloquio/Artes, n 60, Fundaco Galouste Gulbenkian,
Lisboa, Marzo de 1984)
58. Qu es el collage?Cul es su mecanismo?Su tcnica?
... coged un molinillo de caf que llenaris de perlas finas, moled, mezclad el polvo obtenido de esta manera con un poco de mantequilla fina, enojaros, extended la pasta en las suelas
de vuestros zapatos y ofreced esta rebanada a la mujer de vuestros sueos. La operacin tiene que ser ejecutada con furia y preferentemente en la cala de un barco de ruedas que vaya y
vuelva a toda velocidad de la estacin del Este a la estacin de Montparnasse. As, habris realizado un collage clsico (Georges Charbonnier: Conversacin con Max Ernst, en El monlogo del pintor, Pars 1959).
38
Benjamin sealaba que la tcnica ms exacta puede conferir a sus productos un valor mgico que una imagen pintada ya nunca tendr: A
pesar de toda la habilidad del fotgrafo y por muy calculada que est
la actitud de su modelo, el espectador se siente irresistiblemente forzado a buscar en tal fotografa la chispita minscula de azar, de aqu
y ahora, con la que la realidad ha chamuscado por as decirlo su carcter de imagen; a encontrar el lugar inaparente donde, en la determinada manera de ser de ese minuto que pas hace ya mucho, todava
hoy anida el futuro y tan elocuentemente que, mirando hacia atrs,
podemos descubrirlo. La naturaleza que habla a la cmara es distinta
de la habla al ojo; distinta sobre todo porque, gracias a ella, un espacio constituido inconscientemente sustituye al espacio constituido por
la conciencia humana.61 De la misma forma que nuestra imagen,
reflejada en un espejo, puede sorprendernos como algo siniestro,62 la
fotografa con su detencin absoluta nos hechiza.
59. Greenberg advierte que los autores que han intentado explicar las intenciones de Picasso y Braque en sus collages pioneros hablan, con unanimidad sospechosa, de la necesidad de un
contacto con la realidad frene a la creciente abstraccin del cubismo analtico. Pero el trmino realidad, siempre ambiguo cuando se utiliza en relacin con el arte, nunca ha tenido ms
ambigedad que en este caso. Un trozo de papel de pared que imita la textura de la madera no es ms real bajo ningn concepto, ni est ms cerca de la naturaleza, que una simulacin
pintada de esa misma madera; y tampoco el papel de pared, el hule, el papel de peridico o la madera son ms reales o estn ms cerca de la naturaleza que la pintura sobre lienzo
(Clement Greenberg: Collage, en Arte y cultura. Ed. Paids, Barcelona 2002, p. 85).
60. Podramos jugar a buscar para el collage ancestros seculares, encontraramos ms de uno, entre las curiosidades de los embaucadores, caricaturistas y falsarios. El collage moderno no
requiere nuestra atencin por lo que constituye ese parentesco y que es bien poca cosa. La requiere por lo que tiene de concertado, de absolutamente opuesto a la pintura. Por lo que representa de posibilidad humana. Porque substituye un arte envilecido por una forma de expresin de una fuerza y un alcance desconocidos. Porque restituye su verdadero sentido a los viejos planteamientos pictricos, impidiendo que el pintor se entregue al narcisismo, al arte por el arte, devolvindolo a las prcticas mgicas que son el origen y la justificacin de las representaciones plsticas, prohibidas por muchas religiones (Louis Aragon: El desafo a la pintura, en Los colages. Ed. Sntesis, Madrid 2001, p. 47).
61. Walter Benjamin: Pequea historia de la fotografa, en Sobre la fotografa. Ed. Pre-textos, Valencia 2004, p. 26.
62. El mismo Freud narra en primera persona esa experiencia siniestra del doble: Una vez estaba sentado, solo, en un compartimiento del coche dormitorio, cuando al abrirse por una
sacudida del tren la puerta del lavabo contiguo, vi entrar a un seor de cierta edad, envuelto en su bata y cubierto con su gorra de viaje. Supuse que se haba equivocado de puerta al abandonar el lavabo que daba a dos compartimientos, de modo que me levant para informarlo de su error, pero me qued atnito al reconocer que el invasor no era sino mi propia imagen
reflejada en el espejo que llevaba la puerta de comunicacin. An recuerdo que el personaje me haba sido profundamente antiptico (Sigmund Freud: Lo siniestro precediendo a
E.T.A. Hoffmann: El hombre de arena. Ed. Jos de Olaeta, Barcelona 1991, p. 32).
63. John Berger: Cun veloz se puede ir? en Siempre bienvenidos. Ed. Huerga & Fierro, Madrid 2004, p. 244.
64. Cfr. Roland Barthes: La cmara lcida. Nota sobre la fotografa. Ed. Paids, Barcelona 1990, p. 65.
65. Susan Sontag: Sobre la fotografa. Ed. Edhasa, Barcelona 1981, p. 80.
66. Roland Barthes: La cmara lcida. Nota sobre la fotografa. Ed. Paids, Barcelona 1990, p. 157.
67. Cfr. al respecto Regis Durand: El tiempo de la imagen. Ensayo sobre las condiciones de una historia de las formas fotogrficas. Ed. Universidad de Salamanca, Salamanca 1999, p. 71.
68. En un ensayo de 1964 titulado Retrica de la imagen, el crtico francs Roland Barthes describe la fotografa como un repliegue perverso de denotacin dentro de la connotacin,
como un sistema de significado internamente desgarrado entre cultura y naturaleza. En su bsqueda de una semiologa de la imagen fotogrfica (y con ello de una ontologa del proceso
de significacin), Barthes se ve enfrentado a la paradoja... de una mensaje sin cdigo (Geoffrey Batchen: Arder en deseos. La concepcin de la fotografa. Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 2004,
p. 193).
39
de una causa, ejemplos del cual son las huellas, las improntas y los
indicios.73 El ndice carece de cdigo y, por tanto, requiere de texto
para ser descodificado. La fotografa es lo imaginario, su poder responde a su identidad como ndice y su significado reside en las modalidades de identificacin que se asocian a lo imaginario. De nuevo
Krauss tiene que repetir el motivo barthesiano de que la fotografa es
un mensaje sin cdigo.74
69. Porque, sobre todo y en primer lugar, esta aparente oposicin (studium/punctum) no impide sino que, por el contrario, favorece cierta composicin entre ambos conceptos. Qu debemos entender por composicin? Dos cosas que se componen en conjunto. Primero, separados por un lmite infranqueable, ambos conceptos intercambian compromisos; juntos componen,
uno con otro, y ms tarde reconoceremos ah una operacin metonmica; el sutil ms-all-del-campo del punctum, el ms-all-del-campo no codificado, compone con el siempre codificado del studium. Le pertenece sin pertenecerle y es ilocalizable en l; no se inscribe jams en la objetividad homognea del espacio enmarcado, pero lo habita o ms bien lo visita: Es un
suplemento: es lo que aado a la foto y que sin embargo est ya en ella... Ni vida ni muerte, es la obsesin de lo uno por lo otro... Fantasmas: el concepto del otro en lo mismo, el punctum
en el studium, la muerte completamente otra que vive en m. Ese concepto de la fotografa fotografa toda oposicin conceptual, descubre en ella una relacin obsesiva que es quiz un elemento constitutivo de toda lgica (Jacques Derrida: Las muertes de Roland Barthes. Ed. Taurus, Mxico 1999).
70. [] el detalle jams funciona como la metonimia sublimatoria de una posible totalidad: ya que, precisamente, algo relacionado con la prdida de la totalidad misma est en juego. Con
una renuncia a dicha totalidad, y que, sospechamos, es un sentimiento de desencanto frente al mundo (Dominique Baqu: La fotografa plstica. Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 2003, p. 235).
71. Eastman cre no slo una cmara, sino tambin una reconcepcin de los lmites de la prctica fotogrfica, un sistema industrial y una maquinaria para producir materiales normalizados en cantidad suficiente para sostenerlo. Con el lema Apriete el botn y nosotros hacemos el resto, la Kodak llev la fotografa a millones de personas a travs de un proceso de produccin plenamente industrializado. En vez de acudir a un retratista profesional, ahora las personas sin formacin ni conocimientos se hacan sus propias fotos y guardaban los resultados
ntimos, informales o de mala calidad de composicin en lbumes familiares (John Tagg: El peso de la representacin. Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 2005, p. 75).
72. Philippe Dubois: El acto fotogrfico. De la Representacin a la Recepcin. Ed. Paids, Barcelona 1994, p. 51.
73. A diferencia de los smbolos, los ndices basan su significado en una relacin fsica con sus referentes. Son seales o huellas de una causa particular, y dicha causa es aquello a lo que
se refieren, el objeto que significan. Dentro de la categora de ndices entraran las huellas fsicas (como huellas dactilares), los sntomas mdicos, o los propios referentes de los modificadores. Las sombras proyectadas tambin podran servir como signos indicadores de objetos... (Rosalind E. Krauss: Notas sobre el ndice, Parte 1, en La originalidad de la Vanguardia y
otros mitos modernos. Ed. Alianza, Madrid 1996, p. 212).
74. La frase message sans code procede de un ensayo en el que Roland Barthes seala la naturaleza fundamentalmente no codificada de la imagen fotogrfica. Lo que revela especficamente este mensaje [fotogrfico], escribe Barthes, es, en efecto, que la relacin entre significado y significante es cuasi-tautolgica. Indudablemente, la fotografa implica un cierto desplazamiento de la escena (recorte, reduccin, aplanamiento), pero este paso no es una transformacin (como en una codificacin). Lo que se produce es una prdida de la equivalencia (propia de los verdaderos sistemas de signos) y la imposicin de una cuasi-identidad. En otras palabras, el signo de este mensaje ya no se extrae de una reserva institucional; no est codificado. Nos enfrentamos a la paradoja de un mensaje sin cdigo (Rosalind E. Krauss: Notas sobre el ndice. Parte 2 en La originalidad de la Vanguardia y otros mitos modernos, Ed. Alianza,
Madrid, 1996, p. 226).
75. De lindice lindex, cest--dire dans cette frange dinterfrence qui la fois trouble la photographie et explique la trouble quelle instaure, cest--dire encore dans ce pas qui va de
la photographie au muse, se trament depuis plus dun sicle et demi la plupart des questions qui agitent, construisent ou dconstruisent la production de lart. Appareil photographique,
appareil musal revoient lun lautre comme en miroir (Daniel Soutif: De lindice a lindex ou de la photographie au muse en Les Cahiers du Muse National dArt Moderne, n 35,
Centre Georges Pompidou, Pars, 1991, p. 95).
76. A veces me parece que la historia de la pintura moderna se puede leer como la historia de la pintura tradicional puesta del revs, como una pelcula proyectada hacia atrs: un desmantelamiento regresivo y sistemtico de los mecanismos inventados a lo largo de siglos para hacer convincentes las representaciones pictricas del doloroso triunfo de la cristiandad y de
las historias de la gloria nacional. As, las superficies transparentes se llenaron de grumos de pintura, los espacios se aplanaron, la perspectiva se hizo arbitraria, el dibujo se despreocup
de que hubiese correspondencia con los esquemas reales de las figuras, el sombreado fue eliminado a favor de reas de tonos saturados que no preocupaban de los bordes de las formas, y
las formas mismas dejaron de ser representativas de lo que el ojo realmente capta de la realidad perceptual. El lienzo moncromo es el estadio final de este procedimiento colectivo de despictorializacin hasta que a alguien se le ocurra atacar fsicamente el propio lienzo acuchillndolo (Arthur C. Danto: Abstraccin, en La Madonna del futuro. Ensayos en un mundo del
arte plural. Ed. Paids, Barcelona 2003, p. 235).
40
El fetiche ciertamente es tanto un smbolo cuanto un sntoma neurtico, algo que favorece el despliegue de la perversin. Ya se trate de
una parte del cuerpo o de un objeto inorgnico, el fetiche es, simultneamente, la presencia de aquella nada que es el pene materno y signo
de su ausencia: smbolo de algo y de su negacin, proceso mental que
puede mantenerse slo al precio de una laceracin esencial, producindose una fractura del Yo. El fetichismo implica tanto el gusto por
no-acabado cuanto el proceso de la sustitucin metonmica, que, por
otro lado, es caracterstico del arte del index. En cuanto presencia, el
objeto-fetiche es en efecto algo concreto y hasta tangible; pero en
cuanto presencia de una ausencia, es al mismo tiempo inmaterial e
intangible, porque remite continuamente ms all de s mismo hacia
algo que no puede nunca poseerse realmente.84 El fetiche es, en
muchos sentidos, la revelacin de una carencia.85 Se puede pensar en
la fotografa como una huella, fetichista, del encuentro con el enigma
de la sexualidad.86 En el espacio perverso, nada es fijo, todo es mvil,
77. Fuera cual fuera el diseo abstracto que desarrollaran [Lissitzky, Moholy-Nagy, Man Ray, etc.], la transparencia inherente a la fotografa siempre acababa desmontando el juego:
tantos trozos de papel recortados y doblados, tantas limaduras de hierro esparcidas sobre cristal, tantas bolas brillantes balancendose en el aire. Aunque la visin posee una sintaxis de
relaciones abstractas que depende de las condiciones de integridad, simetra, continuidad y lmite, y la pintura puede traducir esta sintaxis en un lenguaje de la forma, la fotografa parece ser lo que se resiste al lenguaje, puesto que es, en palabras de Roland Barthes, un ejemplo del nada que decir. La marca fotogrfica, enunci Barthes, es el signo vaco, el signo cuyo
significado se articula a travs de un sistema no sintctico o semntico; el signo que slo designa una cosa en apariencia e incida el gesto del nio que seala algo con el dedo y dice: Ta,
Da, Sa! [...] y no dice otra cosa; una foto no puede ser transformada (dicha) filosficamente, puesto que est enteramente lastrada por la contingencia de la que es envoltura transparente
y ligera (Rosalind Krauss: Fotografa y abstraccin, en Jorge Ribalta (ed.): Efecto real. Debates posmodernos sobre fotografa. Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 2004, p. 232).
78. Roland Barthes: La cmara lcida. Ed. Paids, Barcelona 1990, p. 31.
79. Un objeto, no es algo tan simple. Un objeto es algo que sin duda se conquista, incluso, como Freud nos lo recuerda, no se conquista nunca sin haber sido previamente perdido. Un
objeto es siempre una reconquista. Slo si recupera un lugar que primero ha deshabitado, el hombre puede alcanzar lo que impropiamente llaman su propia totalidad (Jacques Lacan:
Ensayo de una lgica de caucho, en La Relacin de Objeto. El Seminario 4. Ed. Paids, Barcelona 1994, pp. 373-374).
80. Cfr. Jacques Lacan: Tyche y Automaton, en Los Cuatro Conceptos Fundamentales del Psicoanlisis. El Seminario 11. Ed. Paids, Buenos Aires 1987, pp. 62-63.
81. Rosalind Krauss: Fotografa y abstraccin, en Jorge Ribalta (ed.): Efecto real. Debates posmodernos sobre fotografa. Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 2004, p. 232.
82. Andr Bazin: Ontologa de la imagen fotogrfica, en Qu es el cine?, Ed. Rialp, Madrid 1999, p. 29.
83. Ernst Jnger: Uber den Schmerz, en Blter und Steine. Hamburgo 1934; reproducido en Revista de Occidente, n 127, diciembre, 1991, p. 176.
84. Giorgio Agamben: Estancias. La palabra y el fantasma en la cultura occidental. Ed. Pre-textos, Valencia 1995, p. 72.
85. Cfr. Christian Metz: El significante imaginario. Psicoanlisis y cine. Ed. Paids, Barcelona 2001, p. 82.
86. La fotografa, al igual que el fetiche, es el resultado de una Mirada que ha aislado, congelado, instantneamente y para siempre, un fragmento del continuum espaciotemporal (Vctor
Burgin: Photography, Phantasy, Function, en Thinking Photography. Ed. Macmillan, Londres 1982, p. 190).
41
aura museal a la fotografa,91 establece las pautas para la custodia institucional de ese arte.92
Si, por una lado, fotografa y cine tienen que ver con las tecnologas
del control, por otro suponen el final de la transparencia, abisman la
visibilidad disciplinaria,93 ese archivo que crece vertiginosamente en
la modernidad.94 Conviene recordar que esa fotografa, utilizada para
la construccin del archivo policial, tena un rango casi matematizador.95 Ian Jeffrey considera que la fotografa, a pesar de su potencial
para la supervisin y el control, ha sido principalmente un medio artstico vernculo, sensible a los cambios del talante popular.96
Nuestra sociedad sufre, de distintas maneras, el mal de archivo que
sustituye a la enfermedad histrica, aquel considerarnos hombres
pstumos, por la disponibilidad absoluta que establece un proceso
de desmaterializacin que implica, correlativamente, la reterritorializacin de las formas del poder. El archivo, centro de nuestra economa y configuracin epistemolgica, se localiza o domicilia en la
escena del desfallecimiento de la memoria, no hay archivo sin un
lugar de consignacin, sin una tcnica de repeticin y sin una cierta
exterioridad. Ningn archivo sin afuera.97 La fotografa lo geome-
En la fotografa han coexistido necesariamente dos facetas, indisociables y perfectamente soldadas: por un lado, la imagen como informacin visual; por otro, el soporte fsico, el objeto tridimensional. [...]
Pero a lo largo de la historia, ciertos usos sociales o ciertos enfoques
han privilegiado uno u otro componente; en el dominio del archivo,
por ejemplo, prevalece el aspecto informativo, y en el museo, en cambio, el objetual.90 La expertizacin del historiador del arte dota de
87. Cfr. Paul Virilio: Ground Zero. Ed. Verso, Londres 2002, p. 41.
88. [...] La paradoja fundamental de la pasin por lo Real encuentra su culminacin en su aparente contrario, en un espectculo teatral: desde los procesos-espectculo del estalinismo, a
los espectaculares actos terroristas (Slavoj Zizek: Welcome to the desert of the real!. Verso, Londres 2002, p. 9).
89. El espectculo del mundo, en este sentido, nos aparece como omnivoyeur. Efectivamente, ste es el fantasma que encontramos en la perspectiva platnica, de un ser absoluto al que se
le transfiere la cualidad de omnividente. En el propio nivel de la experiencia fenomnica de la contemplacin, este lado omnivoyeur asoma en la satisfaccin de una mujer al saberse mirada, con tal de que no se lo muestren. El mundo es omnivoyeur, pero no exhibicionista no provoca nuestra mirada. Cuando empieza a provocarla, entonces tambin empieza la sensacin
de extraeza (Jacques Lacan: La esquizia del ojo y de la mirada, en Los Cuatro Conceptos Fundamentales del Psicoanlisis. El Seminario 11. Ed. Paids, Buenos Aires 1987, p. 83).
90. Joan Fontcuberta: Revisitar las historias de la fotografa, en Joan Fontcuberta (ed.): Fotografa. Crisis de historia. Ed. Actar, Barcelona 2002, p. 11.
91. Ni la chispa de azar de Benjamin ni el tercer sentido de Barthes garantizaran el lugar de la fotografa en el museo. El entendido que esta tarea requiere es el historiador del arte
pasado de moda con sus anlisis qumicos y, an ms importante, sus anlisis estilsticos. Autentificar la fotografa requiere toda la maquinaria de la historia del arte y la museologa, con
unas pocas adiciones y ms de un juego de manos. Para empezar est la rareza incontestable de lo antiguo, la copia de poca. Ciertas tcnicas, tipos de papel y productos qumicos han
cado en desuso, por lo que es fcil establecer la antigedad de la copia (Douglas Crimp: La actividad fotogrfica de la posmodernidad, en Jorge Ribalta (ed.): Efecto real. Debates posmodernos sobre fotografa. Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 2004, p. 156).
92. Christopher Phillips ha estudiado, minuciosamente, las concepciones sobre lo fotogrfico que han ido desarrollndose en el MoMA por figuras com Newhall, Steichen, Szarkowski y
Peter Galassi, en El tribunal de la fotografa, en Glria Picazo y Jorge Ribalta (eds.): Indiferencia y singularidad. La fotografa en el pensamiento artstico contemporneo. Ed. MACBA,
Barcelona 1997, pp. 59-98.
93. El cine y la fotografa eran, por supuesto, inseparables de las tecnologas de dominacin y del espectculo de finales del siglo XIX y del siglo XX. Paradjicamente, la creciente hegemona de estas dos tcnicas ayudo a recrear los mitos de la visin como algo incorpreo, verdico y realista. Pero aunque el cine y la fotografa parecan reencarnar la cmara oscura,
aquello no era ms que el espejismo de una serie transparente de relaciones que la modernidad haba ya destruido (Jonathan Crary: Modernizacin de la visin, en Steve Yates (ed.):
Poticas del espacio. Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 2002, p. 145).
94. Cfr. al respecto John Tagg: Prueba, verdad y orden: los archivos fotogrficos y el crecimiento del Estado y Un medio de vigilancia: la fotografa como prueba jurdica, en El peso
de la representacin. Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 2005, pp. 81-87 y 89-133.
95. Cfr. Allan Sekula: El cuerpo y el archivo, en Glria Picazo y Jorge Ribalta (eds.): Indiferencia y singularidad. La fotografa en el pensamiento artstico contemporneo. Ed. MACBA,
Barcelona 1997, p. 150.
96. Ian Jeffrey: texto en Joan Fontcuberta (ed.): Fotografa. Crisis de historia. Ed. Actar, Barcelona 2002, p. 20.
97. Jacques Derrida: Mal de archivo. Una impresin freudiana. Ed. Trotta, Madrid 1997, p. 19.
42
A medidos del siglo XIX ciertos cuadros, como los de Courbet, reciban el sambenito crtico de ser daguerrotipos; frente a ese juicio reaccionaron, entre otros escritores como Champlfleury o Proudhon, que
subrayaron que la fotografa y el arte es siempre una interpretacin y
no una mecnica reproduccin de lo que es.102
Freud caracteriza a la fotografa como captura de la experiencia
fugitiva, el deseo de conservar algo ajeno al fluir temporal, una
prctica afn con la memoria escrita: una prtesis con la que soportar lo innombrable, su implacable llegada. Pero ms que la pulsin
tantica, algunas fotografas pueden alegorizar el deseo del otro,
punctualizaciones de eso (el amor) de lo que no se consigue nunca
hablar.103
Podemos recordar a Arago exponiendo el procedimiento del daguerrotipo en la Academia de Ciencias de Pars. Hizo notar a su atento
auditorio qu extraordinarios servicios poda prestar la fotografa en
el campo cientfico. Cmo se iba a enriquecer la arqueologa gracias
a la nueva tcnica! Para copiar los millones y millones de jeroglficos
que cubren, en el exterior incluso, los grandes monumentos de Tebas,
de Memfis, de Karnak, etc., se necesitaran veintenas de aos y legiones de dibujantes. Con el daguerrotipo, un solo hombre podra llevar
a buen fin este trabajo inmenso. El artista ha de encontrar en el
nuevo procedimiento un precioso auxiliar y, el propio arte se ver
98. La fotografa transforma el mundo en museo, en colecciones de especmenes, de muestras. Geometriza, iguala, clasifica. En cierto modo, cartografa, y, por consiguiente, transforma
el sitio en no-sitio (para retomar la distincin que Smithson hace en otro contexto) (Rgis Durand: El tiempo de la imagen. Ensayo sobre las condiciones de una historia de las formas fotogrficas. Ed. Universidad de Salamanca, Salamanca 1999, p. 103).
99. Allan Sekula indica que tan esencial es la fotografa en el procedimiento archivstico, como el modelo del archivo para la fotografa. Cfr. Alln Sekula: Reading an Archive en Brian
Wallis (ed.): Blasted Allegories. Ed. New Museum, Nueva York 1987.
100. Nestor Garca Canclini: Fotografa e ideologa: sus lugares comunes, en Hecho en Latinoamrica. Segundo Coloquio Latinoamericano de Fotografa, Mxico D.F., INBA, FONAPAS, 1981, p. 19. Jos Antonio Navarrete propone desarrollar la investigacin propuesta por Canclini en Adis, Mr. Newhall en Joan Fontcuberta (ed.): Fotografa. Crisis de historia. Ed.
Actar, Barcelona 2002, pp. 59-73.
101. Gisle Freund: La fotografa como documento social. Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 1993, p. 28.
102. [...] el escritor Champfleury, que, durante, algn tiempo se erigi en campen del realismo, defendi esa escuela contra los ataques que recibi durante el Saln de 1853. Champfleury
sali al paso de las crticas que ponan el sambenito de daguerrotipo a las obras de arte o literatura ejecutadas con alto grado de fidelidad a la realidad, diciendo lo siguiente de un artista cuyos excelentes bocetos del natural carecan de sentido porque los usaba en su estudio para pintar paisajes idealizados: Si ese hombre reprodujese la naturaleza en sus cuadros de la
misma forma que la reproduce en sus bocetos, podra decirse de l que es un pintor. El daguerrotipo, insista Champfleury, era una mquina, y el artista, en cambio, ni era una mquina
ni lo podra ser jams. La reproduccin de la naturaleza por la mano del hombre nunca ser ni reproduccin ni imitacin, ser siempre una interpretacin. [...] Ms imparcial y menos
apasionado que Champfleury y Duranty, Proudhon no slo combata la calumnia del sambenito de daguerrotipo que pesaba contra los cuadros de Courbet, sino que insista en que la
fotografa era capaz de expresar lo ideal. Era imposible, declaraba Proudhon, que pintores o fotgrafos no interpretasen sus temas, no los idealizasen, cada uno segn sus predilecciones
(Aaron Scharf: Arte y fotografa, Ed. Alianza, Madrid, 1994, pp. 142-144).
103. Precisamente ah, en la sensacin, es donde comienza la dificultad del lenguaje; no es fcil expresar una sensacin. [...] Toda sensacin, si uno quiere respetar su vivacidad y su acuidad induce a la afasa (Roland Barthes: No se consigue nunca hablar de lo que se ama, en El susurro del lenguaje. Ms all de la palabra y la escritura. Ed. Paids, Barcelona 1987, p. 352).
A lo mejor es por eso, porque nos faltan las palabras, por lo que recurrimos a las imgenes. Ese puede ser su inmenso valor.
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el conceptual que habra que adjetivar como domstico, este artista que, en los ltimos aos, ha pasado a ser casi una figura de culto
(tras ms de treinta aos de verdadera clandestinidad, fotografiando
en las calles cuando poda ser confundido fcilmente con un espa)
ofrece relatos grotescos, situaciones cuasi-surrealistas, alejadas del
utopismo que lata en las propuestas de la vanguardia constructiva.
En el theatrum mundi de Mikhailov no hay lugar para el herosmo,
la tragedia ha dado paso a una putrefaccin incalificable, entre las
ruinas salta, demenciado, el bufn. Lo cierto es que a este fotgrafo
que persegua por la URSS el color rojo, en una serie realizada entre
1968 y 1975, como un poseso, ciertamente desideologizado, no le
importa hacer el payasete ni tiene problemas especiales para asumir
la ridiculez (caminando, por ejemplo, con un paraguas al viento y
una sonrisa estpida en Viscosidad, 1982). En sus fotografas (particularmente en la crudsima serie titulada Historial clnico, 1997-98), de
una cotidianeidad abismal, se hace visible la pobreza, esa temporalidad sofocante en la que los sujetos carecen de todo y, sin embargo,
encuentran cada da una pequea esperanza a la que aferrarse.
Como acertadamente advierte Bauman, los pobres no son los marginados de la sociedad de consumo, derrotados por la competencia
feroz, ms bien son los enemigos declarados de la sociedad.108 En la
lgica de la exclusin es determinante la figura del pobre como aquel
que no puede ajustarse a la norma, sujetos frente a los que la sociedad
reacciona con una mezcla de temor y repulsin pero tambin con
misericordia y compasin. Nos complace pensar que la pobreza es
un destino o una determinada relacin (o falta de ella) con los
bienes, cuando en sentido preciso es un estatuto social. Necesitamos,
en ltima instancia, volver a los excluidos, literalmente, invisibles,
mantenerlos, permanentemente, fuera de lugar, ajenos a nuestro
44
109. Cfr. Pierre Bourdieu: Efectos de lugar, en La miseria del mundo. Ed. Akal, Madrid 1999, p. 124.
110. Erich Kstner citado por Walter Benjamin: El autor como productor, en Tentativas sobre Brecht. Iluminaciones III. Ed. Taurus, Madrid 1975, pp. 128-129.
111. Cfr. Anne von der Heiden: Consumatum Est? Historial clnico, de Boris Mikhailov, en Boris Mikhailov. Una retrospectiva. Palau de la Virreina, Ed. Electa, Barcelona 2004, p. 150.
112. El tranquilo apasionamiento de la reafirmacin de Barthes a favor de un realismo fotogrfico retrospectivo, cuyo significado inconsciente debe ser siempre la presencia de la muerte, tiene que leerse en contraposicin con la muerte de su propia madre, su reanimado sentimiento de insoportable prdida y su bsqueda de justo una imagen, pero una imagen justa de
ella. Su exigencia de realismo es una exigencia, si no de recuperarla, al menos de saber que estuvo all: el consuelo de una verdad que no peude ser cuestionada (John Tagg: El peso de la
representacin. Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 2005, p. 7).
113. La muerte, tanto la palabra como el acontecimiento, es una fotografa, una fotografa que se fotografa una fotografa que se produce como suspensin de la realidad y sus referentes. Como sugiere Benjamin... la fotografa, como el recuerdo, es el cadver de una experiencia. Una fotografa habla por tanto como muerte, como rastro de aquello que pasa a la historia. Yo, la fotografa, el lmite distanciado entre la vida y la muerte, yo, la fotografa, soy la muerte. No obstante, hablando como muerte, la fotografa no puede ser muerte ni ser ella misma;
a la vez viva y muerta, abre la posibilidad de nuestro ser en el tiempo (Eduardo Cadava: Words of Light: Teces on the Photography of History, en Diacritics 22, n 3-4, Otoo-Invierno,
1992, p. 110).
114. En 1865, el joven Lewis Payne intent asesinar al secretario de Estado norteamericano, W.H. Seward. Alexander Gardner lo fotografi en su celda; en ella Payne espera la horca.
La foto es bella, el muchacho tambin lo es: esto es el studium. Pero el punctum es: va a morir. Yo leo al mismo tiempo: esto ser y esto ha sido; observo horrorizado un futuro anterior en el
que lo que se ventila es la muerte. Dndome el pasado absoluto de la pose (aoristo), la fotografa me expresa la muerte en futuro. Lo ms punzante es el descubrimiento de esta equivalencia. Ante la foto de mi madre de nia me digo: ella va a morir: me estremezco como el psictico de Winnicott, a causa de una catstrofe que ya ha tenido lugar. Tanto si el sujeto ha
muerto como si no, toda fotografa es siempre esta catstrofe (Roland Barthes: La cmara lcida. Ed. Paids, Barcelona 1990, p. 165). Lo real de la fotografa en la medida en que est
bajo el signo del pasado, est bajo el signo tanto del encuentro perdido como de la muerte. Dndome a m el pasado absoluto de la pose (aoristo), la fotografa me expresa la muerte en
futuro. Me estremezco, escribe Barthes, como el paciente psictico de Winnicott, a causa de una catstrofe que ya ha tenido lugar. Tanto si el sujeto ha muerto como si no, cada fotografa es siempre esta catstrofe. Al igual que la tuch, el punctum hace que lo real sea tanto lo que perd como lo que por tanto estar obligado a reproducir a partir de entonces por
repeticin. Los componentes subjetivos de este punctum fotogrfico que Barthes despliega estn vinculados al vocabulario psicoanaltico de un pasado que regresa en el futuro: el objeto
parcial, lo siniestro, la repeticin compulsiva (Rosalind Krauss: Fotografa y abstraccin, en Jorge Ribalta (ed.): Efecto real. Debates posmodernos sobre fotografa. Ed. Gustavo Gili,
Barcelona 2004, p. 233).
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urgente y lo banal ingresan apresuradamente. Gloria Moure ha sealado que este creador sustrae a la fotografa de su adscripcin de literalidad y la convierte en estereotipo de la maneras culturales en las
que espectador se reconocer con toda seguridad, ya que la existencia, a pesar de la materialidad, no es ms que lenguaje, tiempo y
memoria. Centenares de fotografas se disponen en el espacio, atravesadas por cables, iluminadas hasta conseguir una proyeccin en el
tiempo hasta un pasado sin asideros. El individuo, el creador y el
espectador, interfieren en la tempestad de anonimato, para incluir
algo de emocin, un signo de interrogacin ante algo prximo que se
ha vuelto absurdo: la catstrofe se vuelve extremadamente compleja.
En Relicario, se reconoce la conmocin de la idea de la muerte: los rostros de los nios, algunos de ellos ya son estelas funerarias, signos de
la frontera. Este ttem moderno provoca una intensa emocin, en la
que se evita la empata completa. Christian Boltanski ha declarado de
forma explcita su deseo de ser pattico: quiero hacer llorar a la
gente. El arte debe dar emociones. Estoy a favor de un arte que sea
sentimental. Fascinado por la muerte y anclado tambin en la obsesin autobiogrfica, Boltanski viaja con sus objetos sentimentales, los
modifica en cada montaje: prepara en cada lugar una interrogacin,
la misma, que es siempre diferente. El trauma de la infancia es una
potencia que en la obra interviene continuamente, la distancia con
respecto a los dems, una dificultad para asumir la doma de la cultura. En alguna ocasin ha declarado que su proceso con los rostros de
gente muerta le excita, supone la incursin en el dominio del sexo: la
comprensin del sujeto como un objeto que ya no puede reanimarse.
En el fetichismo se introduce el enigma o bien un proceso de perversin: no hay una metfora que sea sustitucin de una palabra original.
Estamos en la demora, en el aplazamiento absoluto. Cada semblante
est petrificado, convertido en la piel externa de una caja de metal en
la que el rigor atmosfrico a obrado escultricamente, no se puede
determinar si claman por el nombre o se han instalado sin resentimiento en el olvido. Boltanski ha sealado en una entrevista con
Gianni Romano su proximidad a la esttica teatral excesiva de
Tadeuz Kantor, ambos tienen un sentido radical con respecto a los
cambios narrativos que se comprometen con la guerra, sus obras traducen un sentimiento que, en trminos de Benjamin, sera un nuevo
comienzo. Todas esas personas estn muertas y no hay voz que
pueda expresar el dolor por su prdida. Los muros de cajas metlicas,
contenedores de recuerdos no abiertos, los sudarios, las sbanas
46
en estratos de una memoria que se agarra a la piel cuando el naufragio es inminente. Deshacer el rostro no es nada sencillo, Deleuze nos
recuerda que se puede caer en la locura. No es azaroso que el esquizofrnico pierda al mismo tiempo el sentido del rostro, del suyo propio y del de los dems, el sentido del paisaje, el del lenguaje y de sus
significados dominantes. Deshacer el rostro se afirma en Mil mesetas es lo mismo que traspasar la pared del significante, salir del agujero negro de la subjetividad. Cabezas buscadoras que deshacen a su
paso los surcos, el territorio en el que se haba intentado cimentar la
identidad. Una fuga creadora que es un devenir clandestino de la
vida, caminar hasta el exceso. Sostenerse, acaso, en el lmite de la
inhumanidad. El mecanismo narcisista se abisma en presencias que
tienen algo de fantasmagora, invocacin a ese dolor ajeno que tambin puede conmocionarnos. La fotografa radicaliza la autorreflexin del hombre moderno por medio de la obstinacin del referente.
El desorden de los objetos hacia el que es conducida la fotografa se
muestra, generalmente, como persistencia del cuerpo querido. El
terrible retorno de la muerte del que Barthes habla en La cmara lcida se concreta en una reflexin sobre la identidad subsistente en el
flujo del tiempo. Hay ciertos rasgos de contingencia en eso que es acogido, incluso un grado de extraeza en lo que querra mantener la
proximidad. Lo desconcertante de las imgenes se encuentra en su
proponer un tiempo utpico, detenido y, sin embargo, marcado por la
sombra de la nostalgia. La localizacin precisa del que ve convierte lo
mirada en un espacio de estremecimiento, se abre en el instante una
herida sin cura posible. En las obras de Boltanski el detalle ha sido
sacrificado, una luz excesiva: los rostros han quedado atrapados por
la multiplicacin tcnica de la luz. Barthes compar a la fotografa no
con la pintura sino con el teatro por ser una expresin de la muerte;
tambin guarda relacin, por su condensacin, con el haik. Lo
importante es el movimiento que desatan esas imgenes, la travesa de
la sombra que imponen, el aura que se articula en esas configuraciones: el movimiento de la conciencia afectuosa, una mirada que se
tiene que llamar pietas. Lo fotografa es un pretexto de algo que no se
puede narrar ms que indirectamente: lo que se ama, pero tambin la
conversin de lo real en algo que no se puede tocar. Trabajos que ataen al tiempo, fotografas en las que no hay futuro, nada puede ser
aadido: eso conforma su patetismo, su melancola; por medio de
muchas imgenes aparece la muerte en toda su llaneza, ajena a la tragedia y la purificacin: el tiempo se encuentra atascado. El artista va
47
al lugar comn, elabora un memorial del luto.115 Catstrofe de la finitud, mezcla del evento y el seceso, posibilidades lmites de la expresin. Boltanski sabe que el acontecimiento trgico es csmico, lo que
sucede en el drama barroco discurre ante los ojos de los que padecen
luto: la historia se despliega como ostentacin de la tristeza, ciclo
natural. Se podra entender la esttica de Boltanski como trauerspiel
(drama barroco y juego del luto), entretenimiento para tristes: contemplando el espectculo del luto profundizan en su ser criaturas deyectas.
El melanclico mira a la tierra para ver los signos de la caducidad, su
dilatada experiencia de lo efmero, pero tambin para sentir que en ese
fondo oscuro se encuentran tesoros inagotables. La melancola traiciona al mundo por amor al saber. Pero su tenaz absorcin contemplativa
se hace cargo de las cosas a fin de salvarlas. El barroco ha realizado esta
travesa del dolor que no se complace en la belleza ni en las armnicas
promesas del clasicismo; se ha situado en la mortalidad, en la fragilidad de lo humano y por ello slo ha conseguido encontrar su medio de
expresin en la alegora. Procesos de alegorizacin sobre la muerte y el
sentimiento de culpa, obras que confluyen en la experiencia excesiva de
lo religioso pero se diferencian al no transmitir idea alguna de reconciliacin. Se trata de una disonancia del sentimiento, de la reintroduccin de la finitud que sera algo obsceno, un acontecimiento abstracto
aunque inevitable. Boltanski realiza una particular lectura de la tradicin juda, su experiencia dilatada del exilio, as como del sufrimiento
especfico de la segunda guerra mundial. Los hombres fueron reducidos al rango objetual ms despreciable, el cadver se volatiliz y, paradjicamente, la memoria se transform en banal. En cada mirada hay
un hueco, una fisura, en la que puede reconocerse la oscilacin: vctima o criminal. Luces de interrogatorio sobre las fotografas, altares en
los que tras unas sbanas tiemblan una velas, muros que compartimentan lugares de culto. Una religin que es un dilogo imposible con
los que no pueden contestar. Reliquias desnudas en las que el rostro se
ha convertido en vrtigo. Algunos cuadros dice Boltanski slo incitan a rezar y a comulgar, otros nos cuestionan. Yo me sito prximo a
estos ltimos. Sin embargo, siento no ser ms religioso. Hubiese querido ser un verdadero pintor, pero lo rechazo, sta es mi desgracia. Lo
que le queda hacer son esos monumentos que se asemejan a pequeos
oratorios.116 Freud adverta que la melancola es ambivalente, en ella
se desencadena una regresin de la libido al narcisismo. El conflicto
que surge en el yo, y que la melancola suele sustituir por la lucha en
derredor del objeto, tiene que actuar como una herida dolorosa, que
exige una contracarga, extraordinariamente elevada. Combates alrededor del objeto que no pueden articularse verbalmente ms que por la
repeticin. Boltanski se mantiene en ese territorio en el que los espejos
no devuelven ninguna imagen, llega a la rostridad de la conciencia y
de la pasin, redundancia de resonancia y acoplamiento. Multiplicidad
poltica del semblante: sostiene la voz. Pronuncia lo que carece de
nombre. Catlogo de emociones o, para ser ms preciso, desorden y
potencia de los rostros-lmite. Una narracin ajustada a un tiempo de
penuria: el sujeto va desapareciendo en su espacializacin. Sombras,
altares, ropas arrojadas. Luces, luces: abrir los ojos para ver la oscuridad vivir. Un fulgor que no quiere simplemente consolar, como Celan
escribiera los muertos siguen mendigando. Memoria umbra, justo
antes de que el olvido se aduee de todos los semblantes.
El primer encuentro escribe Susan Sontag con el inventario fotogrfico de los horrores constituye una suerte de revelacin, la revelacin prototpicamente moderna: una epifana negativa. Para m, fueron unas fotografas de Bergen-Belsen y Dacha que cayeron en mis
manos por casualidad en una librera de Santa Mnica, en el mes de
julio de 1945. nada de lo que he visto, en fotografas o en la vida real,
me ha vuelto a causar nunca una impresin tan aguda, tan profunda y
tan instantnea. En realidad, creo que mi vida se divide en dos partes:
antes de ver aquellas fotografas (tena yo entonces doce aos) y des-
115. Con la fingida ingenuidad (o sentimentalismo) del memorialista, Boltanski imit las masacres en serie de la II Guerra Mundial. La ficcin autobiogrfica trascendi una mitologa
personal excesivamente estrecha e ilustr las relaciones ambiguas entre el archivo y la destruccin, la memoria y la negacin. En 1947, en el prlogo al libro de Natalie Sarraute Portrait
dun Inconnu, Sartre imagin un tipo de redencin de la soledad individual a travs del lugar comn: Esta bella palabra tiene varios significados: designa sin duda los pensamientos ms
trillados, pero lo cierto es que estos pensamientos han devenido un lugar de encuentro para la comunidad. En ellos todo el mundo se reconoce a s mismo y reconoce a los dems. El lugar
comn es de todo el mundo y mo; est en m y pertenece a todo el mundo; es la presencia de todo el mundo en m. Es, en esencia, la generalidad. Para apropirmelo, debo realizar un
acto, un acto por el que despoje de mi particularidad a fin de adherirme a lo general, de convertirme en generalidad. No slo para parecerme a todo el mundo, sino para ser precisamente la encarnacin de todo el mundo. Por este acto eminentemente social de asociacin me identifico con todos los dems seres en la indistincin de lo universal. A partir de Boltanski, ha
sido imposible creer en esta constitucin paradjica de la comunidad, esta permanencia de lo universal, aun cuando centenares de fotgrafos estadounidenses parecen todava aferrarse a
esta creencia (Jean-Francois Chevrier/James Lingwood: Otra objetividad, en Jorge Ribalta (ed.): Efecto real. Debates posmodernos sobre fotografa. Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2004, pp.
254-255).
116. Cfr. Dominique Baqu: La fotografa plstica. Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 2003, p. 228.
48
pus, aunque tendran que pasar varios aos para que comprendiera
plenamente de qu trataban.117
118. Vincent Lavoie: El instante de la historia, en Joan Fontcuberta (ed.): Fotografa. Crisis de la historia. Ed. Actar, Barcelona 2002, p. 1995.
119. El xito que tuvieron los cuadros sobre incidentes y temas de la guerra de Crimea, como los que pintaron Augustus Egg y Thomas Barker, se debi en gran medida a que sus autores
usaron como base las fotografas de Fenton. La cmara fotogrfica aument inevitablemente la autenticidad y el realismo pictrico de personajes pblicos, acontecimientos y catstrofes sociales. Tambin es inevitable que, con el crecimiento de la prensa popular, creciese adems la demanda de imgenes de este tipo (Aarn Arte y fotografa. Ed. Alianza, Madrid 1994, p. 88).
120. Pero la piedad, lejos de ser el gemelo natural del miedo en los dramas de infortunios trgicos, parece diluirse aturdirse con el miedo, mientras que el miedo (el pavor, el terror)
por lo general consigue ahogar la piedad. Leonardo est sugiriendo que la mirada del artista sea, literalmente, despiadada. La imagen debera consternar y en esa terribilit hallamos una
suerte de belleza desafiante (Susan Sontag: Ante el dolor de los dems. Ed. Alfaguara, Madrid 2003, p. 88).
121. Sin duda, el inconsciente juega malas pasadas, as cuando hablas puede venir una palabra que noe s la que t queras decir, convirtindose el sujeto en un lugar de paso para algo
que habr decidido salir a cualquier precio: A eso se le llama lapsus; una palabra que viene de un verbo latino, irse, caer. La palabra cae como un trozo de carne que se escapa de tu
boca, como un sorbo de leche que corre a lo largo de tus labios cuando bebes demasiado aprisa. Fallas tu golpe. Freud deca que el lapsus es un acto fallido: saltarse un peldao, tropezar
en la acera, olvidar el chal. Todo eso pasa a travs de ti, t no piensas en ello, son tonteras. Unas tonteras sobre las cuales se construye todo el psicoanlisis. Y el sujeto no es ni yo ni t
ni l. Es la cita del inconsciente (Catherine Clment: Vidas y leyendas de Jacques Lacan. Ed. Anagrama, Barcelona 1981, pp. 31-32).
122. Las torres gemelas estaban marcadas por los fantasmas, arcaicos y terriblemente infantiles, de toda una cultura tecnocinematogrfica, lo cual no basta, todo lo contrario, para hacer
de la agresin del 11 de septiembre una obra de arte, como Stockhausen tuvo el mal gusto de decir para obtener con ello, al precio de barato de la provocacin, una miserable prima de
originalidad (Jacques Derrida en Giovanna Borradori: La filosofa en una poca de terror. Dilogos con Jrgen Habermas y Jacques Derrida. Ed. Taurus, Madrid 2003, p. 260).
123. Se piense lo que se piense de su cualidad esttica, las Twin Towers eran una performance absoluta, y su destruccin es tambin una performance absoluta. Sin embargo, eso no justifica la exaltacin de Stockhausen del 11 de septiembre como la ms sublime de las obras de arte. Por qu un acontecimiento excepcional debera ser una obra de arte? La recuperacin
esttica es tan odiosa como la recuperacin moral o poltica sobre todo cuando el acontecimiento es tan singular debido precisamente a que est ms all tanto de la esttica como de la
moral (Jean Baudrillard: Rquiem por las Twin Towers, en Power Inferno. Ed. Arena, Madrid 2003, pp. 37-38).
124. Cuando en los das inmediatos a los sucesos de Nueva York, Washington y Pittsburg, el compositor alemn Karl Heinz Stockhausen declar que el atentado a las Torres Gemelas
haba sido la primera gran obra de arte del siglo XXI, las reacciones bienpensantes no tardaron en producirse. Condenas sin paliativos, acusaciones de frivolidad cuando no de complacencia
con los terroristas, de desprecio a las vctimas, todos los calificativos parecieron pocos para anatematizar sin intentar entenderlas las palabras del artista. Pero Stockhausen no fue el nico
en pensar de este modo. Iaki balos ha contado cmo asisti a los sucesos del 11-S pegado a un televisor en un hotel de Lima en compaa de una serie de arquitectos clebres y la reaccin de los asistentes ante el fulgor de las imgenes (Baudrillard dixit) que aparecan ante sus ojos asombrados: alguien se atrevi a hablar de la poderosa atraccin visual del horror y coincidimos en que lo que estbamos viendo era la encarnacin misma de lo sublime contemporneo, un espectculo que en la antigedad slo tipos como Nern se haban permitido, y que
ahora se serva democrticamente en directo a todos los ciudadanos de la aldea globlal (Santos Zunzunegui: Tanatorios de la visin, en Brumaria, n 2, Salamanca, 2003, pp. 240-242).
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125. Y no representa el ataque al World Trade Center frente las pelculas hollywoodenses de catstrofes, lo que la pornografa snuff frente a las vulgares pelculas de porno sadomasoquistas? ste es el elemento de verdad en la provocativa afirmacin de Karl-Heinz Stockhausen de que los aviones que se estrellaron contra las torres gemelas representan la obra de arte
por excelencia. Podemos percibir el hundimiento de las torres gemelas como la conclusin climtica de esa pasin por lo Real del arte del siglo XX: los mismos terroristas no lo hicieron
en principio para provocar daos materiales reales, sino por la propia espectacularidad de su efecto (Slavoj Zizek: Welcome to the desert of the real!. Verso, Londres 2002, p. 11).
126. La discusin sobre el serrn o la arena [en Final de partida] es tan nimia como decisiva la diferencia en la accin residual. Transicin de lo mnimo a la nada. Lo que Benjamin admiraba de Baudelaire, la capacidad para decir algo extremo como extrema discrecin, Beckett puede reclamarlo; el consuelo de todo el mundo, que las cosas siempre pueden ir an peor, se
convierte en juicio condenatorio. En el reino entre la vida y al muerte, donde ya ni siquiera se puede sufrir, la diferencia entre serrn y arena lo es todo; el serrn, subproducto miserable
del mundo de las cosas, se convierte en un bien escaso y su privacin en intensificacin de la pena de muerte a perpetuidad (Theodor W. Adorno: Intento de entender Fin de partida en
Notas sobre literatura. Obra Completa, 11. Ed. Akal, Madrid 2003, p. 300).
127. Jacques Derrida en Giovanna Borradori: La filosofa en una poca de terror. Dilogos con Jrgen Habermas y Jacques Derrida. Ed. Taurus, Madrid 2003, p. 145.
128. Esa inercia es el orden que Clov supuestamente ama y que define como fin de sus actividades: CLOV.- Un mundo en el que todo estuviera en silencio e inerte, y cada cosa tuviera
su sitio definitivo, bajo el polvo definitivo. Probablemente, la veterotestamentaria En polvo te convertirs se traduce por: porquera (Theodor W. Adorno: Intento de entender Fin de
partida en Notas sobre literatura. Obra Completa, 11. Ed. Akal, Madrid 2003, p. 310).
129. En torno a esa cuestin comienza Paul Virilio a desarrollar sus reflexiones en Unknown Quantity. Ed. Thames & Hudson, Fondation Cartier pour lart Contemporain, 2002, p. 6.
130. Qu mejor ejemplo hay de una catstrofe generalizada que el de la desintegracin de un gran imperio como el de Alejandro! Pero en un tema como el de la propia humanidad,
uno no puede ver ms que la superficie de las cosas. Herclito dijo: No podras descubrir los lmites del alma aunque para ello viajaras por todos los caminos: tal es la profundidad de su
forma (Thom citado en Alexander Woodcock y Monte Davis: Teora de las catstrofes. Ed. Ctedra, Madrid 1994, p. 161).
131. En las ruinas hay belleza. Reconocerla en las fotografas del World Trade Center en los meses que siguieron al atentado pareca frvolo, sacrlego. Lo ms que se atreva a decir la
gente era que las fotografas eran surrealistas, un eufemismo febril tras el cual se ocult la deshonrada nocin de la belleza. Pero eran hermosas muchas de ellas: de fotgrafos veteranos
como Gilles Prez, Susan Meiselas y Joel Meyorowitz, entre otros (Susan Sontag: Ante el dolor de los dems. Ed. Alfaguara, Madrid 2003, p. 89).
132. Chomsky ha sealado que si se repasan cientos de aos de historia se comprueba que los pases imperialistas han sido bsicamente invulnerables: Se cometen cantidad de atrocidades, pero en otro sitio (Noam Chomsky: Poder y terror. Reflexiones posteriores al 11/09/2001. Ed. RBA, Barcelona 2003, p. 14).
133. Theodor W. Adorno: Intento de entender Fin de partida, en Notas sobre literatura. Obra Completa, 11. Ed. Akal, Madrid 2003, p. 290.
134. Un hogar es un sitio donde todo puede ir mal (David Lynch en Chris Rodley: David Lynch por David Lynch. Ed. Alba, Barcelona, p. 357).
135. Hay un cuadro de Klee que se llama ngelus Novus. En l se representa a un ngel que parece como si estuviese a punto de alejarse de algo que le tiene pasmado. Sus ojos estn
desmesuradamente abiertos, la boca abierta y extendidas las alas. Y este deber ser el aspecto del ngel de la historia. Ha vuelto el rostro hacia el pasado. Donde a nosotros se nos manifiesta una cadena de datos, l ve una catstrofe nica que amontona incansablemente ruina sobre ruina, arrojndolas a sus pies. Bien quisiera l detenerse, despertar a los muertos y recomponer lo despedazado. Pero desde el paraso sopla un huracn que se ha enredado en sus alas y que es tan fuerte que el ngel ya no puede cerrarlas. Este huracn le empuja irremediablemente hacia el futuro, al cual da la espalda, mientras que los montones de ruinas crecen ante l hasta el cielo. Ese huracn es lo que nosotros llamamos progreso (Walter Benjamin: Tesis
de filosofa de la historia, en Discursos interrumpidos I. Ed. Taurus, Madrid 1973, p. 183).
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Resulta difcil pensar que conseguiremos, de una forma no quimrica, constituir una familia humana que pudiera testimoniarse por
medios de las fotografas.136
Algunos fotgrafos eluden lo que llamaramos lo social, como Man
Ray que habla de la expresin lrica de un deseo comn por medio de
la fotografa.137 Para l, lo decisivo era la luz, eso que nos excede, algo
que le lleva al tono mstico: Yo he intentado captar esas visiones que
la luz crepuscular, el exceso de luz, su misma fugacidad o la lentitud
de nuestro aparato ocular, sustraen a nuestros sentidos. Me han sorprendido siempre, me han encantado a menudo; algunas veces, literalmente, me han extasiado.138 Sus rayogramas, que son como huellas fantasmales de objetos desaparecidos, se parecen a las impresiones que dejan los pies sobre la arena, a las marcas sobre el polvo.139
Acaso sea el aire el lugar de las imgenes y el polvo puede convertirse en el pigmento del aura.140 Presencia extraa la del Pistn de
corriente de aire (1914) de Marcel Duchamp, algo infraleve (alegora
136. Es posible que la fotografa sea la profeca de una memoria social y poltica todava por alcanzar. Una memoria as acogera cualquier imagen del pasado, por trgica, por culpable
que fuera, en el seno de su propia continuidad. Se transcendera la distincin entre los usos privado y pblico de la fotografa. Y existira la familia humana (John Berger: Usos de la
fotografa, en Mirar. Ed. Hermann Blume, Madrid 1987, p. 60).
137. Man Ray, pintor y fotgrafo americano que trabaj en Pars desde 1921, tambin crey en la trascendencia de su arte, sobre cuya funcin social escribi en diversas ocasiones. Su
declaracin de principios, un breve texto titulado La era de la luz fue utilizado como prefacio de la obra Photograhs by Man Ray 1920 Paris 1934. Se senta obligado a justificar una obra
tan personal como la suya, en una poca preocupada por el problema de la perpetuacin de la raza o de la clase, y por la destruccin de sus enemigos. Las imgenes de Man Ray, con sus
primeros planos y detalles sorprendentemente iluminados, sus brillantes desnudos, sus rostros onricos, sus sombras y sus rastros de luz, tenan que ver afirmaba con la expresin lrica
de un deseo comn. Sus emociones y sus deseos personales, lricamente expresados en fotografas contribuan al descubrimiento de las categoras humanas universales, y se oponan a las
divisiones inherentes a los conceptos de raza y clase. Man Ray era un surrealista y crea en la bondad esencial de las emociones, frente al poder represivo y degradante de las convenciones
sociales (Ian Jeffrey: La Fotografa. Ed. Destino, Barcelona 1999, pp. 113-114).
138. Man Ray: texto publicado en Paris Soir, 26 de marzo de 1926, reproducido en Revista de Occidente, n 127, diciembre, 1991, p. 169.
139. Rosalind E. Krauss: Notas sobre el ndice. Parte 1, en La originalidad de la Vanguardia y otros mitos modernos. Ed. Alianza, Madrid 1996, p. 216. Si Ribemont-Dessaignes llamaba a
los rayograma objetos de sueos, el mismo Man Ray sealaba que tenan que ver con la memoria, debido a que suscitaban el recuerdo ms o menos claro de algn acontecimiento, como
las imperturbables cenizas de un objeto consumido por las llamas.
140. Si lair devient le lieu des images leur porte-empreinte, leur mdium, leur subjectile par excelenc, alors le pigment sera pollen ou pousserire, et la touche sera souffl ou aura
(Georges Didi-Huberman: Gene du non-lieu. Air, poussire, empreinte, hantise. Ed. Minuit, Pars 2001, p. 81).
141. Cfr. Marcel Duchamp: Notas. Ed. Tecnos, Madrid 1989, p. 21.
142. Impresin tipo foto etc. infraleve (Marcel Duchamp: Notas. Ed. Tecnos, Madrid 1989, p. 25).
143. Como seala Philippe Dubois la fotografa y Marcel Duchamp son por cierto los puntos de partida y de referencia permanentes para la Historia del Arte Contemporneo (cfr. Philippe
Dubois: El acto fotogrfico. De la Representacin a la Recepcin, Ed. Paids, Barcelona, 1994, pp. 105-107) siendo, sin duda, crucial el ensayo de Rosalind Krauss Notas sobre el ndice, en
La originalidad de la Vanguardia y otros mitos modernos. Ed. Alianza, Madrid 1996, pp. 209-235
144. El principio de neutralidad inaugurado por el Museo, y que Duchamp llamara belleza la indiferencia se desarrollar al lmite del campo fotogrfico. En esa colonizacin de la experiencia y la vida, la fotografa realiza el designio colonial del arte como apropiacin extensiva de lo real (Juan Luis Moraza: Templo porttil. Tiempo fuego, en Papel alpha. Cuadernos
de fotografa n 2, 1996, p. 125).
145. La acumulacin de polvo es una especie de ndice fsico del paso del tiempo. Duchamp denomina a esa acumulacin Cra de polvo (Elevage de poussire); tal es el ttulo de la fotografa de la superficie de la obra realizada por Man Ray que Duchamp incluy en las notas del Gran Vidrio. Las firmas de ambos artistas aparecen en la parte inferior de la foto (Rosalind E.
Krauss: Notas sobre el ndice. Parte 1, en La originalidad de la Vanguardia y otros mitos modernos. Ed. Alianza, Madrid 1996, p. 216).
146. En Paul Pouvreau, con una burla ms acentuado, son cubos y palas, escobas y escobillas las que aparecen en Escenas de... que no se prestan a nada sublime ya que todos sabemos que nunca
se gana al polvo... Ahora bien, como haciendo eco a la famosa fotografa tomada en 1920 por Man Ray, que captaba el polvo depositado en el Gran Vidrio de Marcel Duchamp y titulada levage de poussire, Paul Pouvreau deposita meticulosamente sobre un suelo que parece de cemento o linleo cocina?garaje?taller? En cualquier caso, espacio privado y cerrado las armas de
un divertido combate. All donde Peter Fischli y David Weiss, en Der Lauf der Dinge, elaboran una coreografa predeterminada del derrumbamiento y el caos de las cosas, Paul Pouvreau instruye un orden que, por ser precario e, in fine, absurdo, se traduce no obstante por la rectitud geomtrica de las lneas, crculos, cuadrados y rectngulos de polvo. Pero no hay mano que agite
estos instrumentos de combate, no hay un sujeto que presida la organizacin de las cosas (Dominique Baqu: La fotografa plstica. Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 2003, pp. 231-232).
51
147. Leo Steinberg: El plano pictrico horizontal, en Steve Yeats (ed.): Poticas del espacio. Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 2002, pp. 282-283.
148. La puerta abierta es un escenario que espera poblarse. El farol aguarda la oscuridad; la escoba, una persona que la utilice, y la entrada, un ocupante. El medio con el que Fox Talbot
trabaja le impide mostrarnos el final de la historia. A cambio, hace significativas las ausencias y apunta que a la imaginacin corresponde incorporarlas. Estos elementos significativos y
sugerentes resultan esenciales para este arte, pues amplan el posible sentido de una fotografa, a la vez que restringen y orientan la interpretacin (Ian Jeffrey: La Fotografa. Ed. Destino,
Barcelona 1999, p. 21). Cfr. Daniel Soutif:
De lindice a lindex ou de la photographie au muse en Les Cahiers du Muse National dart Moderne, n 35, Centre Georges Pompidou, Pars 1991, p. 73.
149. L.B. Alberti: De Pictura, cit. en Omar Calabrese: Naturaleza muerta, en Cmo se lee una obra de arte. Ed. Ctedra, Madrid 1993, p. 21.
150. Omar Calabrese: Naturaleza muerta, en Cmo se lee una obra de arte. Ed. Ctedra, Madrid,1993, p. 21.
151. Gilles Deleuze: La imagen-tiempo. Estudios sobre cine. Vol. 2, Ed. Paids, Barcelona 1987, p. 31.
152. John Berger: Cmo aparecen las cosas?, o Carta abierta a Marisa, en El Bodegn. Ed. Galaxia Gutenberg, Crculo de Lectores, Barcelona 2000, p. 61.
52
el tema de la identidad coherente y fija con una suerte de actitud cientfica que contrasta con la visin sarcstica del pueblo alemn que plasm el pintor George Grosz;155 Alfred Dblin seal que igual que hay
una anatoma comparada, Sander ha practicado una fotografa comparada, adquiriendo con ello un punto de vista cientfico superior al de los
fotgrafos de detalles, afinando la percepcin fisiognmica en un tiempo de bruscos desplazamientos del poder.156 Qu les deca August
Sander a sus retratados antes de fotografiarlos?Y cmo se lo deca
para que todos lo creyeran por igual? Todos ellos miran a la cmara
con la misma expresin en los ojos. En la medida en la que hay diferencias, stas son el resultado de la experiencia y del carcter del fotografiado: el cura ha vivido una vida diferente del empapelador; pero
para todos ellos la cmara de Sander representa la misma cosa. Les
dira sencillamente que sus retratos iban a pasar a la historia?Y cuando se refera a la historia lo haca de tal modo que su vanidad y su vergenza se desvanecan, de forma que mirar a la lente y, utilizando un
extrao tiempo verbal histrico, se dicen a s mismo: As era yo. No
podemos saberlo. Hemos de limitarnos a reconocer el carcter totalmente nico de su obra, que l plane con el ttulo general de El hombre del siglo XX.157 Volvemos a contemplar la fotografa de los jvenes campesinos encaminndose a un baile en la zona de Westerwald en
1914, esa imagen que acaso sea el punto de partida para una novela.158
nuevo gen que su invencin ha producido en la familia de las imgenes. Las primeras fotos contempladas por un hombre (Niepce ante La
mesa puesta, por ejemplo) debieron de darle la impresin de parecerse como dos gotas de agua a las pinturas (siempre la camera obscura);
saba, sin embargo, que se encontraba frente a frente con un mutante
(un Marciano puede parecerse a un hombre); su consciencia situaba el
objeto encontrado fuera de toda analoga, como el ectoplasma de lo
que haba sido: ni imagen, ni algo real, un ser nuevo, autnticamente nuevo: algo real que ya no se puede tocar.153
Acaso el objeto del siglo, el referente moderno, sea, como propone
Grard Wajcman, un campo de ruinas, el lugar de la demolicin, all
donde toto est roto en mil pedazos. Todo en su lugar. Los restos de
los objetos y de los cuerpos y el lugar de estos cuerpos y de estos objetos: es eso lo que importaba. La ruina y el lugar sin lo cual nada tiene
lugar. Nada tuvo lugar nunca sino el lugar. All donde se encontraba
encerrada la totalidad de la memoria y de su arte. La memoria que
marcha en el tiempo es, primeramente, asunto de lugar. Haber tenido lugar es tener un lugar. Rotura de cristales, fractura de vajillas, alimentos esparcidos. Desastrosa naturaleza muerta este nacimiento del
ars memoriae tal vez el gnero pictrico de la naturaleza muerta
naci tambin, lejanamente, de eso.154 La memoria del temblor.
Las cosas en equilibrio precario. Como en Quiet Afternoon, (19841985) de Peter Fischly y David Weiss: un rallador, una zanahoria y un
pepino. Algo grotesco, una cosa que podemos hacer nosotros mismos.
Sander anunci que lo que quera hacer era una retratos naturales que
muestran a sus modelos en el entorno acorde con su personalidad.
Cuando uno se despierta en mitad de un sueo, aun del ms desagradable, se siente frustrado y con la impresin de haber sido engaado
para bien suyo. De ah escribe Theodor W. Adorno que los sueos
El s mismo, lo tipolgico est perfectamente sedimentado en las fotografas de August Sander que trabaja como un taxonomista, indaga en
153. Roland Barthes: La cmara lcida. Ed. Paids, Barcelona 1990, p. 152.
154. Grard Wajcman: El objeto del siglo. Ed. Amorrortu, Buenos Aires 2001, p. 16.
155. En contraste con los dibujos de George Grosz, que sintetizaban el espritu y al variedad de los tipos sociales de la Alemania de Weimar mediante la caricatura, los retratos arquetpicos (como l los llamaba) de Sander implican una neutralidad pseudocientfica anloga a la de esas ciencias tipolgicas, solapadamente tendenciosas, que florecen en el siglo XIX, como
la frenologa, la criminologa, la psiquiatra y el eugenismo (Susan Sontag: Sobre la fotografa. Ed. Edhasa, Barcelona 1981, p. 69).
156. Quiz de la noche a la maana obras como la de Sander cobren una insospechada actualidad. Los desplazamientos del poder, que se han vuelto tan inminentes entre nosotros, suelen convertir en una necesidad vital el educar y afinar la percepcin fisiognmica. Ya vengamos de la derecha o de la izquierda, tendremos que acostumbrarnos a que nos miren en funcin de nuestra procedencia. Y, recprocamente, tendremos que mirar a los dems. La obra de Sander es ms que un libro de fotografa: un atlas que nos entrena para ello (Walter
Benjamin: Pequea historia de la fotografa, en Sobre la fotografa. Ed. Pre-textos, Valencia 2004, p. 46).
157. John Berger: El traje y la fotografa, en Mirar. Ed. Hermann Blume, Madrid 1987, p. 33.
158. La foto resulta fascinante. Los tres jvenes llevan trajes oscuros con los pantalones arrugados en los tobillos, cuellos blancos, sombreros y bastones. Parecen haberse detenido momentneamente para mostrarse a la cmara. Pese a la similitud de vestimenta, los tres muestran un carcter distinto. El que parece el jefe del grupo vuelve la cabeza con severidad en direccin a Sander y su cmara. El que se halla a su derecha podra muy bien ser un hermano ms corts, de expresin y gesto totalmente naturales. El tercero, un poco separado de los otros
dos, parece de carcter mucho ms disoluto, como indican el rizo bajo el ala de su sombrero ladeado, el cigarrillo, la chaqueta arrugada. La fotografa resulta inmensamente sugestiva: ms
que un documento sociolgico parece el punto de partida para una novela (Ian Jeffrey: La Fotografa. Ed. Destino, Barcelona 1999, p. 132).
53
Feria callejera (1933), una fotografa extraordinaria de Brassa: un individuo, con un megfono o ms bien un embudo metlico invita a
entrar en al atraccin, tras l otro exhibe una enorme fotografa de una
mujer de piernas gordsimas. El rostro del otro ha desaparecido para
exhibir al freak. El artista est, no cabe duda, zarandeado por la multitud. Pero Brassa sabe tambin lo que supone estar solo, metido en las
sombras de la ciudad. Acompaa a los vagabundos, observa a las prostitutas, entra en los burdeles, es un verdadero profesional de los bajos
fondos,161 su mirada revela la complicidad con lo raro, la excitacin
ante los pequeos acontecimientos que estn en la sombra.
Pero resulta que la cmara tiene el poder inverso, esto es, el de sorprender a la gente presuntamente normal de tal modo que la hace
parece anormal. El fotgrafo selecciona la rareza, la persigue, la
encuadra, la procesa, la titula.164 En cierto sentido, hacer fotografas
es algo cruel y mezquino aunque en ese encuentro pueden compartir
el modelo y el que mira a travs de la cmara una intimidad breve e
intensa. Diane Arbus, que consideraba a la fotografa un secreto
acerca de un secreto, comentaba que con frecuencia tena la sensacin de que la gente iba a fotografiarse tal como si acudieran a un
mdico o un adivino: para descubrir cmo son. El retrato lleva a cabo la
objetivacin de uno mismo y marca el lmite de la relacin con los
dems. En la condicin humana, Arbus detecta una melancola fundamental que slo el artificio y la imaginacin pueden disipar. Y el
mundo real ese lbrego teln de fondo, mejor que quede oculto.
Arbus y sus personajes, muy a menudo excepcionales, reconstruyen
las convenciones para ajustarlas a ellos. Su punto de partida es la rutina y cuanto ms se alejan de ella, ms felices parecen.165
Los personajes de Arbus no han escapado, como es lgico, a la esttica de la clonacin, sus gemelas han sido refotografiadas.166
159. Theodor W. Adorno: Mnima Moralia. Ed. Taurus, Madrid 1987, p. 111.
160. En una esquina vio Karl un cartel con el siguiente texto: En el hipdromo de Clayton se contratar hoy, desde las seis de la maana hasta la medianoche, personal para el Teatro de
Oklahoma!Te llama el gran Teatro de Oklahoma!Y llama slo hoy, slo una vez!El que ahora pierda la oportunidad, la perder para siempre!El que piensa en su futuro es de los nuestros!Todos sean bienvenidos!El que quiera hacerse artista, presntese!ste es el Teatro que est en condiciones de emplear a cualquiera!Cada cual tendr su puesto!Felicitamos anticipadamente a todo el que se decida!Pero dense prisa a fin de ser atendidos antes de la medianoche!A las doce cerramos todo y ya no volveremos a abrir!Maldito sea el que no nos
crea!Adelante, a Clayton!. Haba bastante gente delante del cartel, pero el inters que provocaba no pareca grande. Haba tantos carteles!; ya nadie crea lo que los carteles decan. Y se
era an ms inverosmil que lo que suelen ser generalmente los carteles. Ante todo tena un grave defecto: no se lea en l ni una sola palabra acerca de la paga. Por poco digna de mencin
que hubiese sido, el cartel se habra referido a ella sin duda; no habra olvidado el elemento ms tentador. Nadie quera hacerse artista y, en cambio, todo el mundo deseaba que le pagasen
por su trabajo (Franz Kafka: Amrica. Ed. Orbis, Barcelona 1987, pp. 315-316).
161. Brassa se dedica luego a los bajos fondos y nos sita fuera de los lmites, en las madrigueras del opio, en los prostbulos, en la pecaminosa Rue Quincampoix y la srdida Rue de
Lappe. Nos presenta la banda de Albert, a La Mme Bijou, a Kiki, a Conchita y a La Pantera. Encuentra a tipos raros, pero, por lo general, sus personajes de las calles son ms elegantes
que extraos, obsesionados sobre todo por el porte y el vestido (Ian Jeffrey: La Fotografa. Ed. Destino, Barcelona 1999, p. 185).
162. Lo que en verdad implica la profesin de fe de realismo de la fotografa es la creencia de que la realidad est oculta. Y si est oculta hay que develarla. Cualquier cosa registrada por
la cmara es un descubrimiento, ya se trate de algo imperceptible, movimientos fugaces y fragmentarios, un orden que la visin natural no puede captar o una realidad enaltecida (expresin de Moholy-Nagy), o simplemente de la manera elptica de ver (Susan Sontag: Sobre la fotografa. Ed. Edhasa, Madrid 1981, p. 131).
163. Beaumont Newhall: Historia de la fotografa. Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 2002, p. 292.
164. Susan Sontag: Sobre la fotografa. Ed. Edhasa, Barcelona 1981, p. 44.
165. Ian Jeffrey: La Fotografa. Ed. Destino, Barcelona 1999, p. 218.
166. Un fotgrafo de Nueva Jersey encontr en esa ciudad a las gemelas que trece aos antes (en 1967) haban posado para Arbus, y la convenci para que posaran para l. Hay una ligera mana de refotografiar lugares y personas ya vistos en fotografas ampliamente difundidas; imagino que los fotgrafos han descubierto que el tiempo, en lugar de desvanecerse, fluye
(Martha Rosler: Dentro, alrededor, y otras reflexiones. Sobre la fotografa documental en Jorge Ribalta (ed.): Efecto real. Debates posmodernos sobre fotografa. Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona
2004, p. 123).
54
El principio segn el cual un acontecimiento, para convertirse en histrico, debe existir en el instante, ha sido introducido por la fotografa, no cabe la menor duda. Tanto si se trata del clich que representa la muerte heroica del soldado republicano durante la Guerra Civil
Espaola, de la imagen de la nia vietnamita quemada por el napalm,
167. Slo los modernos crean en la primaca de la imagen nica, catrtica como las logradas por H. Cartier-Bresson y A. Kertsz (y slo durante un periodo relativamente corto en los
aos treinta). En la modernidad tarda y la posmodernidad la norma ha sido un continuo de imgenes que se desplazan de un momento incluso al siguiente, tal como se observa por primera vez en The Americans de R. Frank (1958) (Ian Jeffrey: entrevista en Joan Fontcuberta (ed.): Fotografa. Crisis de historia. Ed. Actar, Barcelona 2002, p. 26).
168. Vincent Lavoie: El instante de la historia en Joan Fontcuberta (ed.): Fotografa. Crisis de historia. Ed. Actar, Barcelona 2002, p. 203.
169. Resulta que fue tomada por Elliott Erwitt por encargo de la agencia publicitaria Doyle Dane Bernbach, que a su vez haba recibido un encargo de la oficina de turismo de
Francia en los aos cincuenta. Erwitt percibi mil quinientos dlares por la fotografa, para la que utiliz a su chofer y al sobrino de ste: El hombre pedale hacia delante y hacia
atrs unas 30 veces hasta que Erwitt consigui la composicin ideal. [...] Incluso en una imagen tan poco improvisada como sta se pone de manifiesto el talento de Erwitt para la
fotografa documental, afirma asombrosamente Erla Zwingle en la columna Incide Advertising publicada en el nmero de diciembre de 1979 de American Photographer (Martha
Rosler: Dentro , alrededor y otras reflexiones. Sobre la fotografa documental, en Jorge Ribalta (ed.): Efecto real. Debates posmodernos sobre fotografa. Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona
2004, p. 81).
170. O cuando Alexander Gardner traslad por motivos compositivos del cadver del soldado confederado para obtener su famosa imagen Home of a rebel Sharpshooter. Cfr. A. D.
Coleman: El mtodo dirigido. Notas para una definicin, en Jorge Ribalta (ed.): Efecto real. Debates posmodernos sobre fotografa. Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 2004, p. 136.
171. [...] lo documental transform la retrica plana de la evidencia en un drama sentimentalizado de experiencia que favoreca una imaginaria identificacin de espectador e imagen,
lector y representacin, que suprima la diferencia para as limitarlos a las relaciones paternalistas de dominacin y subordinacin de las que dependan los efectos de verdad de lo documental (John Tagg: El peso de la representacin. Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 2005, p. 21).
172. Martha Rosler: Dentro, alrededor y otras reflexiones. Sobre la fotografa documental, en Jorge Ribalta (ed.): Efecto real. Debates posmodernos sobre fotografa. Ed. Gustavo Gili,
Barcelona 2004, p. 74.
173. John Stathatos habla del voyeurismo de clase: el voyerurismo siempre ha sido parte inseparable de la mediacin fotogrfica; el arte de la fotografa es, por lo general, el privilegio del
poderoso, mientras que tradicionalmente los desposedos de todo tipo les han suministrado temas variados y exticos. Eso ya constituye un lugar comn; lo que resulta ms interesante es
comprobar que a menudo la condescendencia es sustituida ahora por el desprecio (John Stathatos: Imgenes para el final del tiempo, en Papel Alpha. Cuadernos de fotografa; n 5,
Salamanca 2000, p. 45).
174. Martha Rosler nombra ese otro documental que est decidido a exponer determinados abusos fruto de la situacin laboral de la gente, de la creciente hegemona de las financieras en las ciudades, del racismo, del sexismo y de la opresin de clases; obras acerca de la militancia y la autoorganizacin, u obras que las respaldan (Martha Rosler: Dentro, alrededor
y otras reflexiones. Sobre la fotografa documental, en Jorge Ribalta (ed.): Efecto real. Debates posmodernos sobre fotografa. Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2004 p. 96).
55
Allan Sekula175 no es, de ningn modo, la pseudo-sociologa, literalista y retorizada, que aspira, en el seno del bienalismo, a ser hegemnica.
175. El documental social verdaderamente crtico encuadrar el crimen, el juicio, as como el sistema judicial y sus mitos oficiales. Los artistas que persiguen este objetivo pueden producir o no imgenes teatrales y abiertamente artificiosas; pueden presentar o no textos que se lean como una ficcin. La verdad social es algo ms que una cuestin de estilo convincente
(Allan Sekula: Desmantelar la modernidad, reinventar el documental. Notas sobre la poltica de la representacin, en Jorge Ribalta (ed.): Efecto real. Debates posmodernos sobre fotografa. Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 2004, p. 42).
176. El uso de la fotografa como instrumento poltico se ha reconocido relativamente tarde, porque, por un lado, hasta nuestra poca, la fotografa no ha alcanzado el rango de tcnica
acreditada y precisa; y, por otro, porque durante mucho tiempo se tendi a considerar la fotografa como un medio neutral u objetivo y, por ello, naturalmente excluido de la esfera poltica (Ernst Jnger: El mundo transformado. Una cartilla ilustrada de nuestro tiempo, en El mundo transformado seguido de El instante peligroso. Ed. Pre-textos, Valencia 2005, p. 109).
177. Cfr. Jeff Wall: Seales de indiferencia: aspectos de la fotografa en el arte conceptual o como arte conceptual, en Glria Picazo y Jorge Ribalta (eds.): Indiferencia y singularidad. La
fotografa en el pensamiento artstico contemporneo. Ed. MACBA, Barcelona 1997, pp. 217-250.
178. Cfr. Jean-Francois Chevrier/James Lingwood: Otra objetividad, en Jorge Ribalta (ed.): Efecto real. Debates posmodernos sobre fotografa. Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 2004, pp. 240-243.
179. Una obra como Homes for America (1966) de Graham, concebida en un principio como artculo para una revista de arte, ahora se interpreta plenamente como uno de los primeros
ejemplos de deconstruccin alegrica donde el marco de distribucin, materialidad y lugar de existencia de la obra definen su estructura, su obra desde el principio (Benjamin H.D.
Buchloh: Procedimientos alegricos: apropiacin y montaje en el arte contemporneo en Glria Picazo y Jorge Ribalta (eds.): Indiferencia y singularidad. La fotografa en el pensamiento
artstico contemporneo. Ed. MACBA, Barcelona 1997, p. 107).
180. Cuando dibujo una persona, un objeto, tengo que ser consciente de la proporcin, la precisin, la abstraccin, la deformacin, etc. Cuando pinto a partir de una fotografa, el pensamiento consciente queda suprimido. No s lo que hago. Mi trabajo se asemeja ms a lo informal que a cualquier tipo de realismo. La fotografa tiene una abstraccin propia que no es
nada fcil penetrar (Gerhard Richter: Notas, 1964-1965, en Glria Picazo y Jorge Ribalta (ed.): Indiferencia y singularidad. La fotografa en el pensamiento artstico contemporneo. Ed.
MACBA, Barcelona 1997, p. 17). Cuando empez [Richter] a utilizar la fotografa, no se trataba, segn dijo, de hacer pintura con la fotografa inspirndose en la fotografa, sino algo ms
radical: hacer fotografa con la pintura (Jean-Francois Chevrier: El cuadro y los modelos de la experiencia fotogrfica en Glria Picazo y Jorge Ribalta (eds.): Indiferencia y singularidad. La fotografa y el pensamiento artstico contemporneo, Ed. MACBA, Barcelona, 1997, p. 208).
181. En 1970 el MoMA de Nueva York organiz una muestra internacional titulada Information. Se trataba de una profeca de lo que su comisario, Kynaston McShine, y los organizadores del museo consideraban que iban a ser las preocupaciones del arte de la dcada siguiente: el arte como una compilacin de datos y experimentacin con las formas de lo eviencial.
El catlogo de la exposicin contena una imagen clave, titulada Dust Breeding (Elevages de poussire), realizada cincuenta aos antes. En 1920 el fotgrafo Man Ray visit el estudio de
Marcel Duchamp en Nueva York. All, en el suelo, vio una hoja de cristal llena de polvo. Lejos de constituir una muestra de descuido, Duchamp se haba venido dedicando a cultivar
polvo para crear su escultura de tcnica mixta El gran vidrio. Man Ray fotografi el objeto convirtindolo en una imagen semiabstracta mediante recortes que dejaron el estudio fuera de
la imagen, y le dio su ttulo actual, aunque se conoci tambin con otros nombres, como Vista desde un aeroplano. Los dos artistas firmaron la obra, que en la actualidad ocupa un lugar distintivo, aunque menor, en sus respectivas trayectorias. Seis aos despus de la celebracin de Information, la crtica de arte Rosalind Krauss volvi la vista hacia ella para descubrir que lo
evidencial en forma de indicio o huella se haba convertido, sin lugar a dudas, en preocupacin artstica, especialmente dentro del contexto norteamericano. Ms aun: estableci una comparacin bastante explcita entre ese nuevo giro y la cada vez ms influyente obra de Duchamp, apuntando a Dust Breeding como importante precursora. [] En un artculo publicado en
hace ya bastantes aos en Artforum, el escritor Robert Pincus-Witten reproduca Dust Breeding junto a una de las fotografas de la serie Flour Arrangements (1967) de Bruce Nauman. A lo
largo de un mes, Nauman se dedic a manipular un montn de harina corriente en diversas formas, documentando sus cambios y, en consecuencia, su actividad escultrica. Nauman ha
recurrido frecuentemente a la cmara para plasmar formas apenas visibles pero que estn ah, evitando conferirles una apariencia permanente (David Campany: Survey en Art and
Photography. Phaidon Press, Londres 2003, p. 25).
56
182. Kevin Power: Jrgen Klauke: el revestimiento del cuerpo virtual, en Jrgen Klauke. El yo desastroso. Obra reciente 1996-2001. Museo Internacional de Arte Contemporneo, Lanzarote,
2001, p. 21.
183. Dominique Baqu: La fotografa plstica. Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 2003, p. 191.
184. El avance que represent la fotografa en este sentido tambin fue explorado por Clement Greenberg. Para Greenberg, la mayor cualidad de la fotografa es su transparencia: el
arte de la fotografa es ante todo arte literal... La fotografa alcanza su naturaleza artstica cuando reclama menos atencin para s mismas y deja surgir el sentido prctico del tema.
Por otra parte, las fotografas se convierten en obras de arte cuando trascienden a lo puramente documental y expresan algo que nos afecta ms que el simple conocimiento (Andrea
Kunard: El arte mecnico: algunos debates histricos sobre arte y fotografa, en Joan Fontcuberta (ed.): Fotografa. Crisis de historia. Ed. Actar, Barcelona 2002, p. 170). Cfr. tambin al
respecto Victor Burgin: Ver el sentido, en Jorge Ribalta (ed.): Efecto real. Debates posmodernos sobre fotografa. Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 2004, p. 181. Tambin Szarkowski convierte
la fotografa en un medio moderno en el sentido de Clement Greenberg, una forma de arte que puede distinguirse por sus cualidades esenciales de todas las dems formas de arte, cfr.
Douglas Crimp: Del museo a la biblioteca, en Glria Picazo y Jorge Ribalta (eds.): Indiferencia y singularidad. La fotografa en el pensamiento artstico contemporneo. Ed. MACBA,
Barcelona 1997, pp. 52-53.
57
mundo, lleva a la maravilla por el hecho, de por s insignificante (remitido a nada) de que hay mundo:189 podra ser, valga la imprecisin, lo
sublime de lo banal. La repeticin mecnica de esos impactos puede
llevar al sujeto a un abotargamiento sensorial o, en trminos de Virilio,
a la picnolepsia, esa emergencia, inexplicable, del tiempo ausente.190
Qu significa se pregunta Martha Rosler con sarcasmo reproducir directamente fotografas conocidas o fotografas de obras de arte
conocidas? Las respuestas han sido de lo ms ingeniosas: sacar las
obras de sus reificadas hornacinas y hacerlas accesibles a todo el
mundo (un comisario respetable); afirmar que forman parte de nuestro inconsciente cultural (un artculo reciente del New York Times);
exponer la condicin mercantil de todo el arte en la poca de la reproductibilidad tcnica (crticos influidos por el pensamiento europeo);
protestar contra la sobreabundancia de la imaginera existente (un
amigo mo). Cada una de estas explicaciones permanece en su propio
dominio de significados. (La explicacin ms clara que el artista ha
podido ofrecer han sido observaciones sobre la ambivalencia).188
En torno al arte de vanguardia se habla insistentemente de shock, de ese
choque que produce algo ms que angustia, es (principalmente si tenemos en cuenta el trmino Stoss) un poner en suspenso la obviedad del
185. All donde el montaje de los aos veinte iba en consonancia con la nocin de vanguardia, el mestizaje contemporneo es postmoderno. Es lo miso que decir que interviene despus
del desgaste de los esquemas modernistas, o sea que ya no cree en la posibilidad de producir una imagen nueva, original, sino que aboga por la cita y el reciclaje de las imgenes, la reapropiacin de estilos (Dominique Baqu: La fotografa plstica. Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 2003, p. 197).
186. Joan Fontcuberta: Revisitar las historias de la fotografa, en Joan Fontcuberta (ed.): Fotografa. Crisis de historia. Ed. Actar, Barcelona 2002, pp. 12-13.
187. En estos ltimos aos, cada vez se ha considerado ms imprescindible como herramienta deconstructiva determinada duplicidad calculada. Tanto en la teora como en el arte contemporneo abundan la parodia, el trompe-loeil, la disimulacin (no simulacin, como se viene diciendo); en suma, estrategias de rivalidad mimtica (Craig Owens: Posar, en Jorge
Ribalta (ed.): Efecto real. Debates posmodernos sobre fotografa. Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 2004, p. 194).
188. Martha Rosler: Dentro, alrededor y otras reflexiones. Sobre la fotografa documental en Jorge Ribalta (ed.): Efecto real. Debates posmodernos sobre fotografa. Ed. Gustavo Gili,
Barcelona 2004, p. 107. Una discusin de las posiciones de Martha Rosler y Sherrie Levine, que confiesa hago fotografas de fotografas, se encuentra en Benjamin H.D. Buchloh:
Procedimientos alegricos: apropiacin y montaje en el arte contemporneo, en Glria Picazo y Jorge Ribalta (eds.): Indiferencia y singularidad. La fotografa en el pensamiento artstico
contemporneo. Ed. MACBA, Barcelona 1997, pp. 119-122.
189. La analoga entre el Stoss del arte y esta experiencia de la angustia se captar si se piensa que la obra de arte no se deja trasladar a un orden de significados preestablecidos, al menos
en el sentido de que no deducible de ellos como consecuencia lgica; y tambin en el de que no viene a colocarse simplemente en el interior del mundo tal como es, sino buscando arrojar
sobre l una luz nueva (Gianni Vattimo: El arte de la oscilacin, en La sociedad transparente. Ed. Paids, Barcelona 1990, pp. 140-141).
190. Cfr. Paul Virilio: Esttica de la desaparicin. Ed. Anagrama, Barcelona 1998, pp. 7-8.
191. Slavoj Zizek: El espinoso sujeto. El centro ausente de la ontologa poltica. Ed. Paids, Buenos Aires 2001, p. 309.
58
El pop reaparece. O, para ser ms preciso, nos asedia el dibujo borrado de Rauschenberg. Su violento acto contra las lneas de Willem De
Kooning.196
pueden caer los apegos apasionados.192 Debemos entender la pulsin de muerte como un descarrilamiento ontolgico, un gesto de
des-investidura que remite a la disolucin de la libido: lo que disloca
al sujeto (en el proceso de su constitucin) es el encuentro traumtico con el goce. El yo, constituido especularmente, cree que en torno
a l nicamente hay un terreno lleno de escombros y, precisamente
por ello, se fortifica;193 verse a uno mismo como sujeto unitario implica una forma de represin visual. Pero la declaracin de Sherry
Levine cita otra cosa: No slo reconocemos en estas lneas una descripcin de algo que ya conocemos la escena primordial, sino que
nuestro reconocimiento podra incluso extenderse a la novela de
Moravia de la que ha sido copiada, puesto que esta descripcin autobiogrfica de Levine es slo una sarta de citas robadas de otros. Si la
consideramos una manera extraa de escribir acerca de los mtodos
de trabajo propios, luego quiz debamos remitirnos a la obra que
describe.194
Borradura o forclusin.197
No cabe duda de que Rauschenberg descubre la potica del desecho,
es uno de los grandes traperos de un siglo marcado por el horror, desde
Auschwitz a la bomba atmica para, tras la toma de conciencia de que
incluso los detritus estn sometidos a la estetizacin, convertir la
obra en sedimento de lo que llamara escatologa de la informacin.198
Propuso el plano pictrico de la plancha plana o de la superficie de trabajo como un nuevo orden de experiencia artstico-lingstica, ah se
poda adherir todo lo que se pudiera alcanzar o pensar: tena que se
alguna cosa que pudiera hacer de valla publicitaria, de tablero de mandos, y que pudiera servir de pantalla de proyeccin, con afinidades adicionales con cualquiera otra que fuera plana y sobre la cual se pudiera
trabajar palimpsesto, placa tachada, prueba de imprenta, plancha de
prueba, carta de navegacin, mapa, vista area.199
192. La necesidad de que el apego apasionado proporcione un mnimo de ser implica que ya est all el sujeto en cuanto negatividad abstracta (el gesto primordial de des-apego respecto de su ambiente). La fantasa es entonces una formacin defensiva contra el abismo primordial del des-apego, de la perdida del (apoyo en el) ser, que es el propio sujeto. Entonces, en este
punto decisivo hay que suplementar a Butler: la emergencia del sujeto no equivale estrictamente a la sujecin (en el sentido de apego apasionado, de sumisin a alguna figura del Otro),
puesto que para que se produzca ese apego apasionado ya debe estar all la brecha que es el sujeto. Solo si esta brecha ya est all podemos explicar la posibilidad de que el sujeto se sustraiga al poder del fantasma fundamental (Slavoj Zizek: El espinoso sujeto. El centro ausente de la ontologa poltica. Ed. Paids, Buenos Aires 2001, p. 310).
193. La formacin del yo [je] se simboliza onricamente por un campo fortificado, o hasta un estadio, distribuyendo desde el ruedo interior hasta su recinto, hasta su contorno de cascajos
y pantanos, dos campos de lucha opuestos donde el sujeto se empecina en la bsqueda del altivo y lejano castillo interior, cuya forma (a veces yuxtapuesta en el mismo libreto) simboliza
el ello de manera sobrecogedora (Jacques Lacan: El estadio del espejo como formador de la funcin del yo [je] tal como se nos revela en la experiencia psicoanaltica, en Escritos. Vol. 1,
Ed. Siglo XXI, Mxico 1989, p. 90)
194. Douglas Crimp: La actividad fotogrfica de la posmodernidad, en Jorge Ribalta (ed.): Efecto real. Debates posmodernos sobre fotografa. Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 2004, p. 158.
195. la fotografa es dectica; seala; dice: esto. Para el semilogo es un ndice, un signo indicial, razn por la que es un dectico. Sin embargo, Lacan denomina al encuentro con lo real
el tquico [...] de la palabra tuch. Y puesto que se trata de un encuentro bsicamente perdido una conexin perdida, una cita perdida, el fenmeno tratado en este caso es, segn l, la
distiquia: el dstico, la escisin. Dectico y dstico casi riman (Rosalind Krauss: Fotografa y abstraccin, en Jorge Ribalta (ed.): Efecto real. Debates posmodernos sobre fotografa. Ed.
Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 2004, p. 236).
196. En 1953, Rauschenberg recibi un dibujo de Willem de Kooning despus de comunicarle su intencin de borrar el dibujo y convertirlo en el tema de un trabajo propio. Tras el cuidadoso ejercicio de borrarlo, dejando vestigios de lpiz y huellas de los trazos del dibujo que fueron las pistas para obtener una evidencia visual, el dibujo fue colocado en un marco dorado. La etiqueta de metal grabada adherida al marco fue la seal de identificacin del dibujo como obra de Robert Rauschenberg Erased De Kooning Drawing (1953). En el auge del expresionismo abstracto y su dominio en el mundo del arte, este acto pudo haber sido considerado seguramente como una sublimada agresin parricida por parte del artista ms avanzado de
la nueva generacin, pero actualmente parece que ha constituido uno de los primeros ejemplos de alegorizacin en el arte de la post Escuela de Nueva York. Esto puede ser reconocido
como tal en sus procedimientos de apropiacin, el desgaste de la imagen confiscada, la superposicin o la duplicacin de un texto visual por un segundo texto y el desvo de atencin y lectura hacia el dispositivo de encuadre (Benjamin H.D. Buchloh: Procedimientos alegricos: apropiacin y montaje en el arte contemporneo, en Glria Picazo y Jorge Ribalta (eds.):
Indiferencia y singularidad. La fotografa en el pensamiento artstico contemporneo. Ed. MACBA, Barcelona 1997, p. 104).
197. Para orientarse en semejante mecanismo de borradura absoluto podra apelarse a la nocin de forclusin, tomada de Lacan. Distinguida de la represin, olvido que deja huellas, olvido del tiempo de las ruinas, esto nombra una abolicin radical, la negatividad absoluta de lo que surgi a la luz de lo simblico, de lo que sale al cruce de toda manifestacin del orden
simblico. Sin palabra, lo que sale, pues, al cruce de toda reminiscencia, porque no deja, en lugar de huella, ms que una hiancia. Un agujero (Grard Wajcman: El objeto del siglo. Ed.
Amorrortu, Buenos Aires 2001, p. 20).
198. Cuando descubri lo rpido que los desechos despreciados fueron estetizados (la belleza de una matrcula oxidada, por ejemplo, se convirti en algo evidente para cualquiera), abandon sus combines y comenz a hacer composiciones a base de las imgenes que los peridicos vomitaban a diario: la accin instantnea que tiene lugar en un campo de bisbol, en un
paracadas, en un nudo de autopistas, en un desfile del Cuatro de Julio o entre las porras de los policas antidisturbios que se alzan al aire. Los fragmentos de fotografas fueron trasladados al lienzo mediante un proceso de serigrafa (Dorothy Seckler: The Artist speaks: Robert Rauschenberg, en Art in Amrica, n 54, mayo-junio de 1966, p. 73).
199. Leo Steinberg: El plano pictrico horizontal, en Steve Yeats (ed.): Poticas del espacio. Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 2002, p. 282.
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ra: las imgenes detenidas mantienen la vibracin, la secuencia produce ese espacio fronterizo abstracto-figurativo. Hay una desintegracin del signo, un cuestionamiento de la esttica secular de la representacin que, como he indicado, remite a la certeza de que la descripcin, entendida en la situacin contempornea, supone un copiar lo
que ya est copiado,204 una travesa entre los simulacros y la vertiginosa expansin de una cartografa fotogrfica del mundo, en ese
impulso a captar el momento. Sabemos que la fotografa produce lo
real, creando unas condiciones fabulosas de visin,205 pero tambin
vela, en su enfoque, aspectos del mundo. La imagen fotogrfica (una
suerte de pantalla) tiene una relacin explcita con el deseo y la
memoria, pero tambin con aquello que no se quiere ver, con un
inconsciente colectivo o con la parte maldita, con el reverso de aquella
realidad que habitamos.
200. Porque en un determinado momento, la fotografa penetra en la prctica artstica de tal manera que contamina la pureza de las categoras separadas de la modernidad, las categoras de pintura y escultura. Como consecuencia, esas categoras se ven privadas de su autonoma ficticia, de su idealismo, y por tanto, de su poder. Los primeros ejemplos positivos de esa
contaminacin se produjeron a principios de los aos sesenta, cuando Rauschenberg y Warhol empezaron a serigrafiar imgenes fotogrficas sobre sus telas (Douglas Crimp: Del museo
a la biblioteca, en Glria Picazo y Jorge Ribarlta (eds.): Indiferencia y singularidad. La fotografa en el pensamiento artstico contemporneo. Ed. MACBA, Barcelona 1997, p. 55).
201. Qu es Sleep de Andy Warhol?Qu no es?Es cine?Se trata del aspecto ms avanzado del Pop Art? La ralentizacin, la dilatacin de un detalle hasta sus lmites, para qu tipo
de efecto mximo?La utilizacin de la pantalla como tabla de armona para los sueos, fantasmas o pensamientos del espectador?Un ejercicio de hipnosisUn test de paciencia?Una
broma Zen? Si le irrita, por qu?No es usted capaz de apreciar, de forma relajada, una buena broma?Tiene usted prisa?para ir a dnde? (John Mekas: Sur Sleep dAndy Warhol,
en Et tous ils changent le monde. Bienal de Arte de Lyon, Lyon 1993, p. 105).
202. En esta poca escribe Warhol en POPism hice miles de polaroids de genitales. Cada vez que alguien vena a la Factory, por muy formal que me pareciera, yo le peda que se quitara los pantalones para poder fotografiarle la polla y los huevos... A m personalmente me encantaba el porno y compraba cantidad de artculos continuamente, pero de porno duro, guarro de verdad. Lo nico que tenas que hacer era descubrir lo que te excitaba, y luego comprar las revistas y las pelculas adecuadas a tus gustos, igual que te tomabas las pastillas adecuadas y comas las latas de comida adecuadas. La imagen de Warhol de la cornucopia pornogrfica se parece a la despensa de latas de sopa Campbell pintas: busca la que ms que gusta
entre las treinta y dos y qudatela. La industria alimenticia norteamericana ofrece un abanico de posibilidades tan amplio como el del porno, y plantea un populismo generoso y abierto a
todos los pblicos (Wayne Koestenbaum: Andy Warhol. Ed. Mondadori, Barcelona 2002, pp. 169-170).
203. [...] en sus propias instantneas compulsivas y negligentes, Warhol rompi tambin de forma radical con la visin fotogrfica como manipulacin subjetiva de lo visible; utiliz la
impresin de imgenes en la pelcula como una memorizacin mecnica de los incidentes de una vida imaginaria (completamente condicionada por las imgenes (Jean-Francois
Chevrier/James Lingwood: Otra objetividad, en Jorge Ribalta (ed.): Efecto real. Debates posmodernos sobre fotografa. Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 2004, p. 248).
204. Describir [dpeindre] es [...] remitir de un cdigo a otro y no de un lenguaje a un referente. As, el realismo no consiste en copiar lo real sino en copiar una copia (pintada) [...] Por
obra de una mimesis secundaria (el realismo) copia de lo ya est copiado (Roland Barthes: S/Z, Ed. Siglo XXI, Mxico 1980, p. 46.
205. La fotografa, siempre situada entre las bellas artes y los medios de comunicacin, es la herramienta privilegiada de una exigencia de realismo que no puede satisfacerse con una produccin de objetos autnomos, ni tampoco con la reproduccin, por muy distanciada y crtica que sea, de imgenes preexistentes. A travs de la reactualizacin del modelo de la reproduccin, como norma histrica de una descripcin llamada realista, la cuestin de lo real es lo que se actualizado, puesto al da y restituido a la experiencia del que mira (Jean-Francois
Chevrier: El cuadro y los modelos de la experiencia fotogrfica, en Indiferencia y singularidad. La fotografa en el pensamiento artstico contemporneo. Ed. Llibres de Recerca, MACBA,
Barcelona 1997, p. 211).
206. El discurso en el mundo del arte se identific con lo fotogrfico. [...] me refiero a la nocin de lo fotogrfico en tanto que opuesto a la fotografa per se, a la teorizacin de lo fotogrfico en trminos de sus mltiples copias: ningn rastro de originalidad en el original, a la vez la muerte del autor, la mecanizacin de la produccin de la imagen (Craig Owens entrevistado por Anders Stephanson: Interview with Craig Owens, en Beyond Recognition. Representation, Power, and Culture University of California Press, Berkeley 1992, p. 300).
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207. Douglas Crimp: La actividad fotogrfica de la posmodernidad, en Jorge Ribalta (ed.): Efecto real. Debates posmodernos sobre fotografa. Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 2004, p. 150.
208. Cfr. Philippe Dubois: Le mtissages de limage (photographie, vido, cinma) en La Recherche Photographique, n 13, Otoo de 1992.
209. La actual aparicin de un cierto cine de exposicin por ejemplo el de Douglas Gordon o toda la actual corriente del film by artists, hubiera sido impensable sin la previa aparicin
de un postcinema, de un dominio hbrido de la imagen en movimiento en el que las estructuras narrativas y postnarrativas de los discursos de la televisin y el cine han colisionado y visto
sus formas autnomas deconstruidas (Jos Luis Brea: transfiguraciones contemporneas de la imagen-movimiento: del postcinema al postmedia, en Futuropresente. Prcticas artsticas
en el cambio de milenio. Sala de Exposiciones de la Comunidad de Madrid 1999, pp. 53-54).
210. La expansin del cine, la insistencia sobre el proceso de constitucin de la obra y el arte en tanto que actividad han sido las tres formas indirectas de recepcin del cine por las artes plsticas durante los aos 60. Todas ellas han tenido por caracterstica de estilo, fsica y psicolgicamente, la relacin/reaccin del espectador en su acercamiento inmediato, el tema de investigacin y la autoexploracin del trabajo artstico (Jean-Christophe Royoux: Por un cine de exposicin. Retomando algunos jalones histricos, en Accin paralela, n 5, enero, 2000, p. 100).
211. Cfr. Robert Smithson: A Cinematic Atopia, en The Writings., New York University Press, Nueva York 1979, pp. 105-108.
212. Cfr. Jean-Christophe Royoux: Projet pour un Texte: El modelo cinematogrfico en la obra de Marcel Broodthaers, en Marcel Broodthaers. Cinema. Centro Galego de Arte
Contempornea, Santiago de Compostela 1997, p. 305.
213. En todas partes la heteronoma se ha convertido en norma: los medios no cesan de actuar los unos en relacin con los otros, no cesan de rozarse, de mestizarse, de hibridare, mientras que el arte mismo est cada vez ms contaminado, virusado dira Baudrillard, por su Otro cultura meditica e industria cultural. (Dominique Baqu: La fotografa plstica, Ed.
Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 2003, p. 225).
214. [...] la ficcin que Sherman revela es la ficcin del yo. [...] Todas las fotografas de Sherman son autorretratos donde aparece disfrazada representando un drama cuyos detalles no se
revelan. Esta ambigedad de la narracin es anloga a la ambigedad del yo, que es tanto actor de la narracin cuanto su creador (Douglas Crimp: La actividad fotogrfica de la posmodernidad, en Jorge Ribalta (ed.): Efecto real. Debates posmodernos sobre fotografa. Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 2004, p. 160).
215. Hay una brecha que separar eternamente el ncleo fantasmtico del ser del sujeto de las formas ms superficiales de sus identificaciones simblicas y/o imaginarias no me s nunca
posible el asumir totalmente (en el sentido de integracin simblica) el ncleo fantasmtico de mi ser: cuando me le acerco demasiado, lo que ocurre es la aphnisis del sujeto: el sujeto pierde su consistencia simblica, se desintegra. Y, quizs, la actualizacin forzada en la sociedad real misma del ncleo fantasmtico de mi ser es la por y ms humillante forma de violencia,
una violencia que mina la base misma de mi identidad (mi imagen de m mismo) (Slavoj Zizek: El acoso de las fantasas. Ed. Siglo XXI, Mxico 1999, p. 197).
216. Slavoj Zizek: El acoso de las fantasas. Ed. Siglo XXI, Mxico 1999, p. 161.
217. No est la verdadera Sherman pero entonces tampoco hay un verdadero especatador: de hecho, Cindy Sherman desea que el espectador sea engullido, casi aspirado por sus fotografas, que crea reconocer en determinada postura de un Film Still una escena de cine clebre, mientras que, tal como confiesa la propia Cindy Sherman, dicha escena no existe. Esto significa que a travs de los estereotipos, el espectador se convence de que una copia es una copia... es el original y que un lugar comn transmitido por la imaginera de masas se convierte
en acontecimiento para su mirada, su emocin y su subjetividad2 (Dominique Baqu: La fotografa plstica. Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 2003, p. 227).
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veces ese parecido es algo equivalente a la rigidez cadavrica. La cmara, como ya he dicho, petrifica o, de forma ms atenuada, el sujeto se
detiene ante el fscinum y la potencia de esa mirada. En cierto sentido quien posa tiene que protegerse de la mirada punctual.225 El espejo con memoria (la fotografa) no es solamente el del narcisismo sino
que tambin puede ser semejante a aquel en el que los vampiros no se
reflejan; Joan Fontcuberta ha empleado esa dicotoma entre la seduccin y la desaparicin para establecer la diferencia entre los planteamientos de Diane Arbus y Cindy Sherman,226 el paso de las imgenes
del mundo de los freaks a la ficcin del yo227 como algo proyectado,
imgenes de imgenes, proyectado en una pantalla.
218. La obra de la artista norteamericana Cindy Sherman, con su aguda invocacin a las peculiaridades icnicas tomadas de fotogramas, de la fotografa de moda, la pornografa y la pintura es, en muchos aspectos, el primer ejemplo de fotografa artstica postmoderna (Charlotte Cotton: The Photograph as Contemporary Art. Thames & Hudson, Londres 2004, p. 192).
219. Craig Owens discute esta teora en Posar, en Jorge Ribalta (ed.): Efecto real. Debates posmodernos sobre fotografa. Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 2004, pp. 208-211.
220. Cfr. John Flecher: Versions of Masquerade, en Screen, 29, n 3, 1988 y Griselda Pollock: Mujeres ausentes. (Un replanteamiento de antiguas reflexiones sobre imagines de la mujer
en Revista de Occidente, n 127, diciembre, 1991, pp. 92-93.
221. La fotografa artstica posmoderna, por ejemplo la producida por Sherman, es conocida por su obsesiva reflexin sobre s misma, por su parasitaria autorreproduccin en forma de
citas selectivas de la propia historia pictrica de la fotografa. Segn crticos como Paul Virilio, el fotgrafo, dominado por la indiferencia, no parece capaz ya de encontrar algo nuevo
para fotografiar (Geoffrey Batche: Arder en deseos. La concepcin de la fotografa. Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 2004, p. 215).
222. Craig Owens: Posar, en Jorge Ribalta (ed.): Efecto real. Debates posmodernos sobre fotografa. Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 2004, p. 206.
223. La mascara establece una ruptura de la historia del mundo, supone la partida de los dioses, la aparicin de la muerte, la afirmacin de lo humano como cultura (Marc Petit: Des
visages derobs, en Le visage. Ed. Autrement, Pars 1994, p. 151.
224. John Berger: Ser un retrato?, en El tamao de una bolsa. Ed. Taurus, Madrid 2004, p. 264.
225. Expresada en un punto de luz, el punto en el que se sita todo cuanto me mira, la mirada lacaniana es punctual: punta (detiene, suspende) y punza (pincha, hiere). Si cuando poso
para una fotografa me quedo inmvil, no es para facilitar el trabajo del fotgrafo, sino en cierta medida para resistirme a l, para protegerme de su mirada paralizante (Craig Owens:
Posar, en Jorge Ribalta (ed.): Efecto real. Debates posmodernos sobre fotografa. Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 2004, p. 207).
226. Cfr. Joan Fontcuberta: Elogio del vampiro, en El beso de Judas. Fotografa y verdad. Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 1997, pp. 41-42.
227. [...] la ficcin que Sherman revela es la ficcin del yo. Sus fotografas demuestran que el supuesto yo autnomo y unitario a partir del que esos otros directores creaban sus ficciones
no es ms que una serie discontinua de representaciones, de copias, de falsificaciones (Douglas Crimp: La actividad fotogrfica de la posmodernidad en Jorge Ribalta (ed.): Efecto real.
Debates posmodernos sobre fotografa. Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 2004, p. 160).
228. El rostro es siempre Otro. Nuestras fotografas, nuestros retratos, incluso la imagen que de nosotros refleja el espejo no nos presentan a nosotros, sino que nos ofrecen a Otro, un ser
ajeno, distinto de cmo nosotros mismos nos percibimos (Charo Crego: Geografa de una pennsula. La representacin del rostro en la pintura. Ed. Abada, Madrid 2004, p. 15).
229. Vctor Burgin: Ver el sentido, en Jorge Ribalta (ed.): Efecto real. Debates posmodernos sobre fotografa. Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 2004, p. 176.
230. El conjunto increblemente complejo de los msculos que accionan los gestos no tienen otra funcin que permitir a cada rostro manifestar algo a otro rostro. El rostro de cada ser
humano solamente existe, desde el punto de vista de la visin, para otro rostro. Es a la vez, para cada persona, el testimonio de una presencia humana y su enigma impenetrable. Por esa
razn es imposible, frente a la fotografa de un rostro humano, dejar de proyectar en ella una intencionalidad. En cuanto deja de confundirse con uno mismo y se relaciona con otra persona, el rostro del otro se convierte en una maraa de indicios que hay que descifrar sobre sus intenciones. Pero, incluso en ausencia de todo sujeto humano, una fotografa plantea siempre al espectador interrogantes sobre el lugar que le ofrece. Por ltimo, es propio de toda fotografa y especialmente de las fotos en blanco y negro imponer la ilusin de una mirada de
la image (Serge Tisseron: El misterio de la cmara lcida. Fotografa e inconsciente. Ed. Universidad de Salamanca, Salamanca 2000, p. 92).
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231. [...] los retratos de Avedon nos remiten a la iconografa bizantina, mucho ms que al arte tradicional del retrato. Encontramos en ellos tres caractersticas del icono bizantino: el rechazo de la profundidad del espacio mediante la eleccin de un fondo claro, plano y uniforme (en la iconografa bizantina, ese fondo era dorado); la eleccin del rostro como lugar de un
encuentro posible; y por ltimo, la importancia concedida a la mirada, especialmente a la pupila (Serge Tisseron: El misterio de la cmara lcida. Fotografa e inconsciente. Ed. Universidad
de Salamanca, Salamanca 2000, p. 97)
232. Rosalind E. Krauss: Notas sobre el ndice. Parte 1 en La originalidad de la Vanguardia y otros mitos modernos, Ed. Alianza, Madrid, 1996, p. 210. Roman Jakobson seala que el concepto de shifter es una de las piedras angulares de la lingstica en sus conversaciones con Krystyna Pomorska, cfr. Lingstica, potica, tiempo. Ed. Crtica, Barcelona 1981.
233. Rosalind E. Krauss: Los fundamentos fotogrficos del surrealismo, en La originalidad de la Vanguardia y otros mitos modernos. Ed. Alianza, Madrid 1996, p. 132.
234. Se ha sealado que la fotografa o al menos el deseo de que las imgenes se graben espontneamente sobre una superficie sensible a la luz fue descrita por, al menos, veinte personas distintas en siete pases distintos, entre aproximadamente 1790 y 1839. La aparicin de este deseo [un deseo de fotografiar] como discurso casi siempre precedi y excedi a los conocimientos cientficos necesarios para su realizacin (Geoffrey Batchen: Arder en deseos. La concepcin de la fotografa. Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 2004, p. 181).
235. La fotografa, al menos desde el momento en que Fox Talbot introdujo la tcnica positivo/negativo, puede parecer el mismsimo ejemplo de lo que Jean Baudrillard ha llamado
recientemente el simulacro industrial aplicado a aquellos productos de procesos industriales modernos de los que podemos decir que derivan en cadenas potencialmente infinitas de
objetos idnticos, equivalentes (Christopher Phillips: El tribunal de la fotografa, en Glria Picazo y Jorge Ribalta (eds.): Indiferencia y singularidad. La fotografa en el pensamiento artstico contemporneo, Ed. MACBA, Barcelona 1997, p. 59).
236. Cfr. Jean Baudrillard: La Fotografa o La Escritura de la luz: Literalidad de la imagen, en El intercambio imposible. Ed. Ctedra, Madrid 2000, p. 142.
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Las obras de Vik Muniz son memorabilia en las que rescata y transforma la imagen primera de las cosas, partiendo de una imagen fotogrfica o de su recuerdo que ampla y traduce en una materia poco noble
hasta conseguir una pintura que finalmente fotografa. Utilizando, con
una soltura increble, materiales como el hilo y el alambre, as como
sustancias perecederas como el azcar, el polvo o el chocolate, enfatiza
lo temporal. Segn cuenta a principios de los aos ochenta compr un
ejemplar del libro The Best of Life, en el que se recogan fotografa de
momentos histricos, que perdi el libro en una playa aos despus lo
que supuso el detonante para una reconstruccin de los recuerdos. Este
artista tremendamente curioso y dotado de un fino sentido del humor
(capaz de construir una calavera que tiene el hueso de la nariz redondo como si el payaso tan slo hiciera de la necesidad virtud) es un constructor de ilusiones. Mi rea de inters advierte Vik Muniz es el
reverso del espectro de la ilusin: deseo crear la peor ilusin posible
que todava puede burlar el ojo de una persona normal. Algo tan rudimentario y simple que el espectador piense: No doy crdito a lo que
veo. No puedo estar viendo esto, mi mente es demasiado sofisticada
para creer en algo tan estpido como esto. La obra de arte no es otra
cosa que una falsedad elaborado, una fantasa que nos ayuda a pasar el
rato como las sombras que se hacen con las manos en el muro que
Muniz presenta por medio de radiografas. En buena medida, se comporta como un prestidigitador, haciendo trucos, jugando con las apariencias o, para ser ms preciso, sigue la estela de Houdini que termino deconstruyendo la magia y explicando como se hacan todas aquellas cosas que dejaban al pblico atnito. Es capaz de revisitar la pintura paisajstica decimonnica, sea Corot o Lorrain, y rehacerla con
hilos, aludiendo a lo precario y a la accin del viento, reconstruir, para
el Whitney Museum, las obras de los minimalistas con el polvo de las
salas en las que estn expuestas, dibujar nubes en el cielo con aviones
en una fusin del imaginario infantil con el artificio tecnolgico y las
huellas cada vez ms naturales del medio de transporte areo o utilizar maquinaria para realizar en la arena figuras (unas tijeras, una
pipa o una llave) que desmantelan el esoterismo de las lneas de Nazca.
Si en la serie The Sugar Children (1996), realizada a raz de unas vacaciones en el Caribe en las que se hizo amigo de algunos nios de la
regin cuya felicidad contrastaba con la amargura de sus padres que
trabajaban en la industria del azucar, alude, elpticamente, a la condicin socio-poltica, en Pictures of Chocolate (1997-98) utiliza ese material blando para retratar personajes conocidos como Sigmund Freud o
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Jackson Pollock, o bien edificar con tan ertico y sabroso producto las
catedrales de Burgos, Santiago de Compostela y Len, metaforizando
el modo como se derrite el recuerdo, mientras que en la impactantes
Pictures of Soil (1997-98) compone vanitas literales, sedimenta con tierra la imagen de la muerte. Aunque las imgenes que ha creado
advierte Dan Cameron cubren todo un espectro, desde lo efectista
hasta lo profundo, desde lo cmico a lo moribundo, comparten una
propensin a otorgar forma visual a un dilema tpico de nuestra poca
pero cuyas implicaciones tienen ms largo alcance. Puede una cultura que inexorablemente produce tantas imgenes visuales que llegan a
desbordar la capacidad de la percepcin individual para procesarlas,
volver a investir el acto de ver con un sentido de placer y de provocacin? Su obra, es no cabe duda, el gran juego de las ilusiones.237
Un wunderblock.
Una mano que escribe y borra en medio de un palimpsesto. El recuerdo (lejano) del dibujo borrado. Una sous rature. Ms que pizarra escolar, wunderblock. Verdaderamente, en el fondo mismo del Wunder-
237. Cfr. Vik Muniz y Charles Ashley: A Dialogue, en Vik Muniz. Seeing is believing. Ed. Arena, Santa Fe, New Mexico 1998, p. 27.
238. Es precisamente, esa ruptura con la definicin del plano de representacin del modernismo y el triunfo de la contaminacin, algo que Foster y Douglas Crimp encuentran en la obra
de Robert Rauschenberg: La superficie natural, uniforme, de la pintura moderna es desplazada, mediante procedimientos fotogrficos, por el emplazamiento completamente acultural y textural de la imagen posmoderna (Hal Foster: Introduccin al posmodernismo, en Hal Foster (ed.): La posmodernidad. Ed. Kairos, Barcelona 1985, pp. 13-14).
239. Martha Rosler advierte que la esttica posmoderna de las fotografas de fotografas, el imperio del simulacro, hace que slo podamos imaginar un respiro fuera de la vida social: la
alternativa es ednica o utpica. No hay vida social, relaciones personales, grupos, clases, nacionalidades; no existe ms produccin que la produccin de imgenes. Sin embargo, una crtica de la ideologa necesita cierto fundamento materialista para situarse por encima de lo teolgico (Martha Rosler: Dentro, alrededor y otras reflexiones. Sobre la fotografa documental, en Jorge Ribalta (ed.): Efecto real. Debates posmodernos sobre fotografa. Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 2004, p. 107).
240. Geoffrey Batchen: p. Arder en deseos. La concepcin de la fotografa. Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 2004, 188.
241. Paul Virilio sugiere que la velocidad de la luz ahora denota nuestra experiencia y el trmino gigoflops define la hipervelocidad de los clculos informticos. Sin embargo, en estas
representaciones estadsticas de la velocidad se encuentra lo que se conoce, quiz eufemsticamente, como tiempo real, palabras stas que ahora se entrecomillan siempre porque devienen
un constructo de la tecnologa. El tiempo real parece una creacin, un constructo ideado para recordarnos la relacin entre realidad y temporalidad. Tiempo, historia, memoria elementos de nuestra interaccin con lo real (por problematizado que est por lo ideolgico) se convierten en categoras de la no autenticidad. Se trata de una profunda reconfiguracin con
lo histrico, cuyos efectos tan slo pueden entreverse (Timothy Druckrey: Posthistoria/historia autnoma, en Jorge Ribalta (ed.): Efecto real. Debates posmodernos sobre fotografa. Ed.
Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 2004, p. 310).
242. Benjamin H.D. Buchloh: Lo siniestro arquitectnico en las fotografas de Andre Robbins y Max Becher, en Jorge Ribalta (ed.): Efecto real. Debates posmodernos sobre fotografa. Ed.
Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 2004, p. 337.
243. Cfr. Timothy Druckrey: LAmour Faux en Digital Photography: Captured Images, Volatile Memory, New Montage. Camerawork, San Francisco 1988 y William J. Mitchell: The
Reconfigured Eye. Visual Truth in the Post-Photographic Era. The MIT Press, Cambridge 1992.
244. Esta prdida de realidad ocurre no slo con la Realidad Virtual generada por la computadora, sino, en una forma ms elemental, ya desde el creciente hiperrealismo de las imgenes con las que nos bombardean los medios cada vez ms percibimos slo color y contorno, ya no volumen y profundidad: Sin lmite visual no puede haber, o casi no puede haber,
imgenes mentales; sin una cierta ceguera, una apariencia sostenible [Paul Virilio]. O, como lo expres Lacan, sin un punto ciego en el campo visual, sin este elusivo punto desde el cual
el objeto devuelve la mirada, ya no vemos nada, es decir, el campo visual es reducido a una superficie plana, y la realidad misma es percibida como una alucinacin visual (Slavoj Zizek:
El acoso de las fantasas. Ed. Siglo XXI, Mxico 1999, p. 152).
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de toda imagen-memoria... El mundo se ha convertido en un presente fotografiable, y el presente fotografiado se ha vuelto completamente eterno. Aparentemente arrancado de las garras de la muerte, en
realidad ha sucumbido ms an a ella.
Deadpan aesthetics.245
La historia de la fotografa advierte Daniel Girardin se debe
entender dentro del movimiento que va de la tradicin del Sudario y
de los velos de Vernica hasta las planchas de la Enciclopedia del
siglo XVIII, pasando por la querella de lo iconodulos y de los iconoclastas y posteriormente por el Renacimiento, del que la fotografa realiza algunos de los ideales ideolgicos de belleza y verdad.246
Sin transcendencia, como algo desastrado y divertido, las cosas siguen
girando, lo uno lleva a lo otro, como en el video de Fischli & Weiss Der
Lauf der Dinge (1987) o se trata de celebrar lo cotidiano como en
Chantier Barbs-Rochechouart (1994) de Pierre Huyghe (saltando toda
elipsis) que superpone lo que acontece a la mediacin publicitaria de
lo mismo.247
Los artistas como antroplogos errticos.248
Como bien dice Perniola ahora somos todos performers ms o menos
hbiles y capaces, por ello, an ms comprometedora y apremiante se
revela la exigencia de ofrecer una performance nica, singular,
incomparable. Las dos tradiciones fundamentales del performance,
que tienen que ver con lo espiritual (usualmente mstico-orientalizante) y con lo atltico (coreogrfico, excesivo, sudoroso),249 han
sido desbordadas por la pasin escatolgica y el inmensa tela de
araa del reality show. Ha terminado por confirmarse, de una vez
245. La adopcin de una esttica deliberadamente inexpresiva empuja al arte fotogrfico fuera de los lmites de lo hiperblico, lo sentimental y lo subjetivo. [] La fotografa inexpresiva puede resultar de lo ms concreta en su descripcin de los temas que aborda, pero su aparente neutralidad y globalidad panormica alcanza proporciones picas (Charlotte Cotton:
The Photograph as Contemporary Art. Thames & Hudson, Londres 2004, p. 81).
246. Daniel Girardin: Historias de la fotografa, historia de las fotografas, en Joan Fontcuberta (ed.): Fotografa. Crisis de historia. Ed. Actar, Barcelona 2002, p. 92.
247. Colocarse a nivel de la realidad, a nivel de las cosas. Anclarse en la cotidianidad ms automatizada, ms usada, sin por ello querer sublimarla. No nos engaemos: en este tipo de trabajos como el muy emblemtico Chantier Rochechouart, de Pierre Huygue simple cartel que ilustra unas obras y que fue instalado en el mismo lugar de las obras como un redoblamiento, no se trata de redimir lo banal, ni de transfigurarlo retomando el trmino de Arthur Danto, ni de salvarlo de su banalidad. Por el contrario, se trata de ofrecer lo banal en s mismo,
en su puro estar-ah, a una mirada que no le har escapar de su banalidad, y que podemos imaginarnos como una mirada poco atenta, distrada. Casi aburrida... Lo banal sigue siendo
banal, y en estas fotografas terriblemente anodinas, en las que nada o casi nada llama la atencin, lo banal podramos atrevernos a decir no se desbanalizar. Porque sa no es la apuesta (Dominique Baqu: La fotografa plstica. Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 2003, p. 230).
248. El arte contemporneo que se apodera de lo cotidiano suele estar caracterizado por estrategias intervensionistas que fragmentan, agrupan y realizan su propio montaje sobre trozos de experiencia registrada con el fin de producir un impacto de reconocimiento. Como Hal Foster sealaba en The Return of the Real, se produce la sensacin de que los artistas se erigen en antroplogos errticos, que hurgan en las cuestiones efmeras de la vida corriente y la desvelan como otra cosa perturbadoramente distinta (Joanna Lowry: La fotografa, el vdeo
y lo cotidiano, en Papel Alpha. Cuadernos de fotografa, n 5, Salamanca 2000, p. 5).
249. Mario Perniola: El sex appeal de lo inorgnico. Ed. Trama, Madrid 1998, p. 181.
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250. Cfr. Ralf Rugoff: Liquid Humor, en Erwin Wurm. I love my time, I dont like my time. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts y Hatje Cantz Publishers, 2004, pp. 15-22.
251. Joanna Lowry: La fotografa, el vdeo y lo cotidiano, en Papel Alpha. Cuadernos de fotografa, n 5, Salamanca 2000, p. 9.
252. Cabe apuntar tambin los hallazgos del psicoanlisis en relacin con el sntoma neurtico por el que una idea reprimida es expresada a travs de la realizacin enactiva de una metfora verbal; tomemos un ejemplo del historia clnico de Freud: el vmito histrico de Dora al recordar las insinuaciones sexuales de Herr K., una idea reprimida que le daba nuseas
(Victor Burgin: Ver el sentido en Jorge Ribalta (ed.): Efecto real. Debates posmodernos sobre fotografa. Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 2004, p. 166).
253. Algunos fotgrafos han explorado estas cuestiones [de la intimidad, el erotismo, la pornografa, la locura o el genio] fotografiando situaciones lmite. Son imgenes que por s solas
cuestionan la categora a la que pertenecen. Y lo hacen desplazndose hacia los extremos (Johann Swinnen: Reciclar la realidad: buscar una infraestructura histrica de la paradoja al
paroxismo en Joan Fontcubertad (ed.): Fotografa. Crisis de historia. Ed. Actar, Barcelona 2002, p. 187).
254. Nan Goldin [...] extiende el mbito del lbum familiar, acogiendo no slo bodas sino tambin funerales, no slo velitas de cumpleaos sino tambin palizas y hematomas, no slo
amigos y amantes cuando nos hacen muecas divertidas o carantoas cariosas sino tambin cuando se drogan, mean o follan (Joan Fontcuberta: Videncia y evidencia, en El beso de
Judas. Fotografa y verdad. Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 1997, p. 59).
255. Victor Burgin: Mirar fotografas, en Glria Picazo y Jorge Ribalta (eds.): Indiferencia y singularidad. La fotografa en el pensamiento artstico contemporneo. Ed. MACBA, Barcelona
1997, p. 40.
256. [] me acuerdo del traje de buceo que us Salvador Dal para dar una conferencia hace algunos aos en Londres. El tcnico que lo acompa para supervisar el traje le pregunt a
Dal a qu profundidad se propona descender. El maestro exclam con un ademn triunfal: Al inconsciente!, lo que el tcnico respondi sabiamente: Me temo que no solemos bajar
tanto. Cinco minutos ms tarde, como era de esperar, Dal casi se asfixi dentro del casco (James G. Ballard: Por dnde se va al espacio interior?, en Gua del usuario para el nuevo
milenio. Ed. Minotauro, Barcelona 2002, p. 221).
257. Ernst Jnger: Sobre el peligro en El mundo transformado seguido de El instante peligroso. Ed. Pre-textos, Valencia 2005, p. 314.
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grficas se pierden en el mundo ordinario que contribuyen a construir. La teora ms reciente sigue a la fotografa ms all del lmite
donde sus operaciones se difuminan, en el territorio donde no hay
nada que explicar.258
La casa puede estar llena de huellas del amor, aunque ste sea, como
afirm Beckett en Primer amor, una forma increble del exilio. El sentimentalismo est en franca bancarrota, sobre todo desde que cobramos conciencia (literariamente, de forma ejemplar, en Fin de partida)
de que hay que sobrevivir sobre un montn de escombros, sin que se
pueda mencionar la catstrofe anterior: solo callando puede pronunciarse el nombre del desastre. Lo que queda en el espacio donde las
pasiones se desplegaron es la sombra y las huellas de la prdida. Pero
tambin es cierto que el amante no fue otra cosa que un cobarde,
alguien que se dio a la fuga, aterrorizado por el horizonte de lo
domstico. Como escribiera John Le Carr en Un espa perfecto:
Es amor aquello que an puedes traicionar. El ltimo acto de ese
abandono puede ser la destruccin de la casa, como esa que muestra
Jeff Wall en una magnfica fotografa, La habitacin destrozada, realizada en 1978. Es verdad que no se necesitan muchas explicaciones
cuando vemos ropa dejada, desordenadamente, en cualquier sitio: la
depresin impone su lgica de la falta de sentido de todo. Sin embargo,
la fotografa no es un documento policial de un acto de vandalismo,
sino que eso que parece el resultado de una violencia terrible ha sido
dispuesto as, de hecho, cuando se la examina, parece muy claro que
es una especie de escenario teatral, a juzgar por los puntales junto a
una de las paredes que vemos a travs de la puerta, con lo que esta
pared queda reducida a una superficie teatral.262 Los cajones
revueltos, el colchn rasgado, la pared desconchada y, como remate
ridculo, la figura de la bailarina, como superviviente de esa violencia que ha sido tratada, en la obra de Jeff Wall, como expresin
simblica (una manera de decir lo que no se puede decir), son ele-
258. Victor Burgin: Mirar fotografas, en Glria Picazo y Jorge Ribalta (eds.): Indiferencia y singularidad. La fotografa en el pensamiento artstico contemporneo. Ed. MACBA, Barcelona
1997, p. 31.
259. Diagonal Composition n 3 de Jeff Wall puede, a primera vista, parecernos una obra poco habitual en l debido a la ausencia de un elenco de actores o de una llamativa puesta en escena. Muy al contrario, presenta el aspecto de una instantnea casual, y cortada con torpeza, de temas cotidianos. El zigzag del zcalo, del aparador, del mocho, del cubo y del sucio suelo
de linleo es, sin embargo, algo ms que algo mirado y registrado sin ms. La cuidada construccin por parte de Wall de una serie de objetos perifricos suscita en nosotros interrogantes
acerca de nuestra propia relacin con las fotografas. Qu es lo que nos impulsa a mirar esa imagen? En qu momento de la historia y de nuestras vidas se convirti un fragmento de
suelo representado en una fotografa en algo icnico, merecedor de nuestra atencin? Hasta qu punto necesita abstraerse mediante el aparentemente inocente encuadre para que seamos capaces de identificar como naturaleza muerta esta agrupacin de no-sujetos? La belleza de la fotografa de Wall radica en que, a la vez que da pie a que nos planteemos esos complejos interrogantes, consigue satisfacernos en tanto que obra de arte (Charlotte Cotton: The Photograph as Contemporary Art. Thames & Hudson, Londres 2004, pp. 131-132).
260. Jean-Francois Chevrier: La intimidad territorial. Una idea fotogrfica, en Papel Alpha. Cuadernos de fotografa. n 5, Salamanca 2000, p. 57.
261. Declaracin de Jeff Wall realizada en 1987 recogida en Jean-Francois Chevrier en: At Home and Elsewhere. Dilogo en Bruselas entre Jeff Wall y Jean-Francois Chevrier en Jeff
Wall: Ensayos y entrevistas. Ed. Centro de Arte de Salamanca, Salamanca 2003, p. 54.
262. Arthur C. Danto: Las expresiones simblicas del yo, en Ms all de la Caja Brillo. Las artes visuales desde la perspectiva posthistrica. Ed. Akal, Madrid 2003, p. 74.
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continuidad del tejido vital, la presencia de lo que encanta y la extraa rememoracin de un pasado que es completamente ficticio. No
han sido nicamente la informacin o el alma aptrida de la novela
responsables del eclipse, casi definitivo, de la narracin, tambin es
cierto que, en un mundo de ruidos para exorcizar el silencio pavoroso, apenas existe una educacin de la voz o, en otros trminos, casi
nadie tiene la energa suficiente para decir algo propio. La singularidad, el carcter y, por aadidura, la obra de arte han terminado por
ser suplantados (decorosa manera para describir un gesto que, propiamente, arroja al basurero) por la dinmica de lo espectacular-integrado y, por supuesto, por todas las modas y tarareos pseudo-intelectuales, desde una deconstruccin que termina por convertirse en teologa de lo negativo hasta las vulgatas psicoanalticas o para-estructurales que valen, como no podra ser de otro modo, para una cosa y
para su opuesta. Los autorretratos de Duane Michals titulados
Quin es Sydney Sherman? Pueden ser entendidos como uno de los
sarcasmos ms eficaces sobre los topicazos del arte contemporneo:
ataviado con una grotesca peluca rubia compone una serie de poses
pardicas a las que aade unos textos en los que desmantela la jerga
(lastimosamente fosilizada) de la crtica. Palabrejas como escatolgico, sublimatorio, efecto brechtiano, des-corroborante o subterfugio
flico, subrayan una situacin clnica de interpretosis, es estar instalados entre la complicidad y el malentendido. Desde sus fantsticos
263. De hecho, el accidente se ha convertido, de repente, en algo habitable en detrimento de la sustancia del mundo compartido ste es el significado de accidente integral: el accidente que nos integra globalmente y que a veces llega incluso a desintegrarnos fsicamente. Por consiguiente, en un trmino al que se nos niega ahora el acceso, en donde todo se explica
mediante las matemticas o el psicoanlisis, el accidente es aquello que contina siendo inesperado, verdaderamente sorprendente; esa cantidad desconocida dentro de un hbitat planetario totalmente descubierto; un hbitat sobreexpuesto a la mirada de todos, de la que, de pronto, lo extico ha desaparecido en favor de lo endtico que evocaba Victor Hugo cuando
nos explicaba que es dentro de nosotros donde debemos mirar a lo que est fuera: una terrible admisin de asfixia (Paul Virilio: Unknown Quantity, Thames & Hudson, Fondation Cartier
pour lart contemporain, 2002, p. 129).
264. E. Jentsch destac, como caso por excelencia de lo siniestro, la duda de que un ser aparentemente animado, sea en efecto viviente; y a la inversa: de que un objeto sin vida est en alguna forma animado, aduciendo con tal fin, la impresin que despiertan las figuras de cera, las muecas sabias y los autmatas (Sigmund Freud: Lo siniestro precediendo a E.T.A.
Hoffmann: El hombre de arena. Ed. Jos J. de Olaeta, Barcelona 1991, p. 18).
265. El fenmeno de la incorporacin crptica, descrito por Abraham y Torok, ha sido revisado por Jacques Derrida en el texto F(u)ori, en el cual arroja luz sobre la singularidad de un
espacio que se define al mismo tiempo como externo e interno: la cripta es, por tanto, un lugar comprimido en otro pero de ese mismo rigurosamente separado, aislado del espacio general por medio de paredes, un recinto, un enclave: ese es el ejemplo de una exclusin intestina o inclusin clandestina (Mario Perniola: Larte e la sua ombra. Ed. Einaudi, Turn 2000,
p. 100).
266. La disponibilidad general causar una claustrofobia intolerable; el exceso de opciones ser experimentado como la imposibilidad de elegir; la comunidad participatoria directa universal excluir cada vez con ms fuerza a aquellos incapacitados de participar. La visin del ciberespacio abriendo la puerta a un futuro de posibilidades infinitas de cambio ilimitado, de
nuevos rganos sexuales mltiples, etc., etc., oculta su opuesto exacto: una imposicin inaudita de cerrazn radical. Entonces, esto es lo Real que nos espera, y todos los esfuerzos de simbolizar esto real, desde lo utpico (las celebraciones New Age o deconstruccionistas del potencial liberador del ciberespacio), hasta lo ms oscuramente diatpico (la perspectiva del control total a manos de una red computerizada seudodivina...), son slo eso, es decir, otros tantos intentos de evitar el verdadero fin de la historia, la paradoja de un infinito mucho ms
sofocante que cualquier confinamiento actual (Slavoj Zizek: El acoso de las fantasas. Ed. Siglo XXI, Mxico 1999, p. 167).
267. El locked-in syndrom es una rara patologa neurolgica que se traduce en una parlisis completa, una incapacidad de hablar, pero conservando la facultad del habla y la conciencia y
la facultad intelectuales perfectamente intactas. La instauracin de la sincronizacin y del libre intercambio es la comprensin temporal de la interactividad, que interacta sobre el espacio real de nuestras actividades inmediatas acostumbradas, pero ms que nada sobre nuestras mentalidades (Paul Virilio en dilogo con Sylvre Lotringer: Amanecer crepuscular. Ed.
Fondo de Cultura Econmica, Mxico 2003, p. 80).
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extraordinarios consiguen escapar del conceptualismo y sus tautologas, del efectismo circundante, de la ortodoxia del trauma, para
proponernos, como sealara Foucault, nuevas maneras de ver.
Michals declar, en una entrevista, que utiliza a menudo la palabra
autntico porque es importante ser autnticos en un mundo lleno
de impostores, de gente que posa. Hay un montn de gente que no
tiene un valor profundo. Sin duda, este lcido creador puede
emplear esa palabra tan problemtica (en un tiempo donde lo nico
que importaba ha terminado por devaluarse), sobre todo con una
obra tan intensa y hermosa como la que continua realizando.
Reencontrarse con la obra de Michals supone experimentar, en plena
glaciacin esttica, una rara emocin, como si de nuevo los relatos se
tejieran y el tono de la vida fuera, por momentos, un prodigio de
levedad y magia.
retratos (Warhol agitando la cabeza hasta que sus rasgos desaparecen, Balthus reflejado, elegantemente en un espejo, Duchamp tras
una ventana como si estuviera en exposicin, Pasolini en un callejn sentado junto a unos embalajes, Magritte dominado por un sombrero que cobra vida y crece extraamente) hasta sus ya clsicas
secuencias, Duane Michals permanece fiel a sus mitos y obsesiones,
trabajando con el pequeo formato para reivindicar lo ntimo y apasionado y, sobre todo, resistirse, en nuestros das, al gigantismo de
tanta imagen que revela, nicamente, su vacuidad. Este artista radicaliza la dimensin de la lectura a partir, evidentemente, del placer
de la escritura que, en su caso, llega hasta lo caligrfico. Los textos
intensifican la dimensin potica de las fotografas en las que hay
una suerte de permanente mise en abyme, ya sea el pensar sobre el
pensamiento que se lee en un libro, los prodigiosos juegos especulares,268 el gesto doble de volver la cabeza para contemplar al sujeto
con el que acaba de cruzarse o esa magistral historia en la que las
cosas son raras: un juego de escalas y detalles que establecen un plegamiento de unas imgenes sobre otras, algo semejante a lo que
hiciera, en el campo literario Borges.
Cerca de la msica, pero sin el sonido. La inminencia de una revelacin que no se produce. El peso de los instantes y el tropo del vaco.269
Ms que el misterio, el enigma. En un breve pasaje de la Potica, dedicado a las formas de la diccin artstica, Aristteles define de este
modo el enigma: La forma del enigma consiste, pues, en conectar
trminos imposibles diciendo cosas existentes. En lo enigmtico hay
una particular densidad de metforas, pero tambin una combinacin o
conexin imposible, la mezcla de sentidos literales y figurados.270 El
pathos de lo oculto est conectado con la concepcin surrealista del
imaginario como un plano (mesa de diseccin) donde se encuentra lo
radicalmente heterogneo.
268. La photographie est bien entendu, par excellence, un art du double. Or, prcisment, cette fonction de duplication de la ralit ne satisfait pas Duane Michals, il la rpet cent fois:
Limportant nest pas lapparence des coses, mais leur nature philosophique (Renaud Camus: Lombre dun double, en Duane Michals. Ed. Nathan, Pars 1997).
269. El vaco, al ser por igual la pgina en blanco y un abismo o sima terrible para la vista, para Freud sera la imagen de una represin primera, una defensa anterior a cualquier impulso del que debemos defendernos. Para la crtica, ese vaco es la suma incolora de todos los colores, que es la luz blanca del tropo. Melville lo llam ateismo, con lo que opino, quiso decir
atesmo desde una posicin gnstica, la negacin del dios extrao y verdadero, o la nocin de que en temor se formaron las esferas invisibles. El vaco es blancura o negrura, pues ambas
excluyen el color (Harold Bloom: Los vasos rotos. Ed. Fondo de Cultura Econmica, Mxico 1986, p. 90).
270. El sentido enigmtico se manifiesta, pues, como un significado formalmente indecidible, lo que lleva consigo dos niveles de lo enigmtico: de una parte, la copresencia de dos proyectos
de comprensin alternantes y reversibles (literal/figurado) que pueden ser aplicados igual pero inversamente sobre las expresiones produce, no ya ambigedad o ambivalencia del enunciado,
sino su incomprensibilidad, la clausura de la comprensin en el acto de constatar unas relaciones de significacin indecidibles; de otra parte, la constatacin de esa indecibilidad semntica queda
limitada a la deteccin de dos posibilidades de comprensin cuya coexistencia formal aboca al sinsentido o al sentido contradictorio (Jos M. Cuesta Abad: Poema y enigma. Ed. Huerga &
Fierro, Madrid 1999, pp. 34-35).
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271. Para el animal humano, la sexualidad no es tanto una urgencia que debe ser obedecida como un enigma a descifrar. Laplanche ha identificado el encuentro precoz e inevitable del
sujeto con la seduccin primordial, trmino que designa la situacin fundamental en que el adulto presenta al nio significante, no verbales y verbales, y tambin conductuales, impregnados de significaciones sexuales inconscientes. Esto es lo que Laplanche denomina significantes enigmticos: el nio siente que esos significantes se dirigen a l, pero no tiene los medios
para comprender su significado; sus intentos de dominar el enigma, de simbolizar, provocan angustia y dejan residuos inconscientes. Este extraamiento en la relacin libidinal con el
objeto es una condicin inevitable de la entrada en el mundo adulto, y podemos esperar encontrar sus huellas en toda relacin posterior con el objeto, an en la ms normal (Victor Burgin:
Espacio perverso, en Ensayos. Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 2004, p. 141).
272. En la vida real, cuando nos encontramos con alguien, podemos hablar con l, intercambiar ideas, y aprendemos a conocerle. La imagen, por su parte, representa al otro como un enigma.
El enigma hace su aparicin en la imagen. Uno de los grandes poderes del arte es revelar el misterio de la gente; Shakespeare es uno de los grandes maestros en esta materia, sus personajes no
se conocen, se malinterpretan los unos a los otros. Todos los grandes fabricantes de imgenes nos han revelado lo que la vida nos esconde: somos enigmas para nosotros mismos, y podemos experimentarlo con el arte (Jeff Wall entrevistado por Jean-Francois Chevrier en Jeff Wall: Ensayos y entrevistas. Ed. Centro de Arte de Salamanca, Salamanca 2003, p. 32).
273. Es muy pronto cuando Freud tiene la idea, reformulada en 1900, de que el sueo es realizacin alucinatoria de deseo inconsciente, y en seguida le aparece como el modelo del modo
de funcionamiento primario caracterizado por un deslizamiento del sentido de representacin en representacin segn la va de procesos tales como el desplazamiento, la condensacin
cuya importancia va a detectar en la elaboracin del sueo (Catherine Desprats-Pquignot: El psicoanlisis. Ed. Alianza, Madrid 1997, p. 47).
274. Valentin N. Voloshinov: Freudismo. Un bosquejo crtico, Ed. Paids, Buenos Aires, 1999, p. 111.
275. En los sueos mejor interpretados solemos vernos obligados a dejar en tinieblas determinado punto, pues advertimos que constituye un foco de convergencia, de las ideas latentes,
un nudo imposible de desatar, pero que al mismo tiempo no ha aportado otros elementos al contenido manifiesto. Esto es entonces lo que podemos considerar como el ombligo del sueo,
o sea el punto por el que se halla ligado a lo desconocido. Las ideas latentes descubiertas en el anlisis no llegan nunca a un lmite y tenemos que dejarlas perderse por todos lados en el
tejido reticular de nuestro mundo intelectual. De una parte ms densa de este tejido se eleva luego el deseo del sueo (Sigmund Freud: La interpretacin de los sueos. Vol. 3, Ed. Ctedra,
Madrid 1988, p. 152).
276. En el sueo, algo muy trivial puede ocupar el centro del escenario, esto es, recibir el foco emocional; en este caso se produce un desplazamiento de los sentimientos y de la atencin
con respecto a la cosa, persona o situacin que despierta estos sentimientos. Es, por lo tanto, posible que algo tan intrascendente como, pongamos por caso, un cubito de hielo se convierta, en un sueo, en el objeto de un sentimiento muy fuerte (Victor Burgin: Ver el sentido, en Jorge Ribalta (ed.): Efecto real. Debates posmodernos sobre fotografa. Ed. Gustavo Gili,
Barcelona 2004, p. 168).
277. Creo que el problema de la obra de arte su carga es lo inverso [de la idea de Kandinsky de que arte intenta volver visible lo invisible]: de qu modo, con materia, con algo visible,
con un objeto, tocar no lo invisible (la palabra hace doler un poco la cabeza), sino lo que escapa a la visibilidd, llmeselo pura extraeza, o indecible, u horror, o ausencia, o como se quiera? (Grard Wajcman: El objeto del siglo. Ed. Amorrortu, Buenos Aires 2001, p. 155).
71
chan el carcter nico e irrepetible de todo sueo, de qu otra manera si no podran desnudarle y convertirlo en lugar comn.... En
Ms all del principio del placer advierte Freud que la conciencia
surge en la huella de un recuerdo, esto es, del impulso tantico y de
la degradacin de la vivencia, pero tambin el recuerdo tiene la corporalidad del placer, deja tras de s la sombra de innumerables
deseos.
piedra:279
Ese tesoro secreto283 podra tener que ver con el deseo, con la joya que
resplandece en la oscuridad y nos seduce vertiginosamente, como el
agalma que garantiza un mnimo de consistencia fantasmtica al ser
del sujeto: el objeto a como objeto de la fantasa que es algo ms que
yo mismo, gracias al cual me percibo a m mismo como digno del
deseo del Otro. La pregunta original del deseo no es aquella que
quiere saber realmente qu es lo que quieres decir, sino esa otra que
espera saber qu quieren los otros de m: qu ven en m?qu soy
para los otros?
testimonio fsil.
278. Mientras que la vanguardia crea en la posibilidad de construir la historia, de conferirle forma la forma de lo nuevo, cuando no se trataba, de manera ms radical, de la forma de
la revolucin, de inventar su significado; mientras que el posmodernismo no cesaba de regresar a la historia, de apropirsela revisitando modelos, escuelas y posturas artsticas, la fotografa de finales de los aos noventa, que en esto no se distingue de ese extremo de lo contemporneo del que habla Paul Ardenne, se realiza en otro lugar: en el puro y frgil presente
del instante dado (Dominique Baqu: La fotografa plstica. Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 2003, p. 234).
279. Esta fotografa en realidad, cualquier fotografa plantea la figuracin de una mirada que convierte en objeto y domina, aunque slo lo hace inmovilizando sus objetos, convirtindolos en piedras (Craig Owens: Posar, en Jorge Ribalta (ed.): Efecto real. Debates posmodernos sobre fotografa. Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 2004, p. 202).
280. Segn la lgica de la diffrance, en cierto sentido, en realidad la fotografa ha existido siempre; nunca ha dejado de existir una fotografa. Qu es la fotosntesis, despus de todo, sin
un mundo orgnico de escritura mediante la luz? No es de extraar que toda la historia de la filosofa occidental haya recurrido a la metfora de la luz y del sol; como Derrida ha sugerido, el pensamiento occidental es, en s mismo, una forma de fotologa. En base a ello, Eduardo Cadava seala: Nunca ha existido un tiempo sin fotografa, sin el residuo y la escritura
de la luz. Si en el principio encontramos la palabra, esta palabra ha sido siempre una palabra de luz el hgase la luz sin el cual no habra historia. (Geoffrey Batchen: Arder en deseos.
La concepcin de la fotografa. Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 2004, p. 184).
281. Seguramente habra que releer algunos pasajes de Roland Barthes: S/Z. Ed. Siglo XXI, Madrid 1980.
282. Uno de los primeros fotgrafos que mostr inters por el uso de la luz artificial fue Nadar. Su estudio, situado en el boulevard des Capucines, estaba equipado con una gran batera
porttil Bunsen, y hacia 1860 asombr a los parisinos sacando las primeras fotos de las catacumbas y las cloacas de Pars (Aarn Scharf: Arte y fotografa. Ed. Alianza, Madrid 1994, p. 65).
283. (De este modo, la Fotografa del Invernadero, por descolorida que est, es para m el tesoro de los rayos que emanaban de mi madre siendo nia, de sus cabellos, de su piel, de su
vestido, de su mirada, aquel da) (Roland Barthes: La cmara lcida. Ed. Paids, Barcelona 1990, p. 144).
284. Se puede tratar de una repugnante intrusin excremental: Ah reside el sentido del famoso cartel de Prohibido el paso! al principio y al final de El ciudadano Kane: es muy peligroso entrar en este dominio de la mxima intimidad, donde uno encuentra ms de lo que busca y, repentinamente, cuando ya es demasiado tarde para retirarse, uno se encuentra a s
mismo en un reino viscoso y obsceno... (Slavoj Zizek: El acoso de las fantasas. Ed. Siglo XXI, Mxico 1999, p. 34).
72
COLECCIONANDO
FOTOGRAFAS
FILIPPO MAGGIA
1. Sontag, Susan: The Volcano Lover (edicin espaola: El amante del volcn. Alfaguara, Madrid 20036, p. 142. Traduccin de Marta Pessarrodona).
73
74
FILIPPO MAGGIA
75
ella: desde el cartel publicitario en los pasillos del metro a la reelaboracin de iconos pertenecientes a la memoria colectiva. Recorriendo
la lista encontramos despus a Bernd e Hilla Becher, su sucesor en la
Academia de Dsseldorf, Thomas Ruff, y tambin Thomas Struth,
Cindy Sherman, Nan Goldin, Robert Mapplethorpe, John Coplans.
Adquiridos en tiempos nada sospechosos, cuando todava la fotografa y las obras de estos artistas se podan adquirir en cotizaciones
normales, si se comparan con las cifras alcanzadas hoy, este importante sector de la coleccin, por derecho, puede ser citado como un
ventajoso, adems de inteligente caso de inversin de dinero pblico
en arte contemporneo, dado que completa, actualizndola y hacindola appealing, una coleccin ya fuerte, recontextualizndola ahora
en el ms amplio dominio del arte contemporneo donde la fotografa representa el papel principal. Todo ello, repetimos, gracias a una
poltica de inversin cultural que hoy demuestra toda su bondad
dirigindose a un pblico ms abierto, joven y disponible a la recepcin y organizacin de cdigos visuales, teniendo en s genticamente sus huellas.
Atendiendo precisamente a este pblico nuevo, heterogneo e informado, capaz de consumir a gran velocidad y de reelaborar cada vez
los datos viejos con aquellos apenas digeridos, las nuevas colecciones,
como aquellas ya existentes, deben sin duda continuar esta poltica de
adquisiciones, dialogando con otras disciplinas, como la arquitectura,
hoy protagonista eficaz y estimulante para el arte contemporneo, a
veces incluso capaz de superarla por calidad y velocidad de anlisis en
la decodificacin de las mutaciones ambientales en acto en el paisaje
contemporneo.
Klucis o Valentina Kulagina; una increble y nica seleccin de artistas ibricos que han experimentado y magnficamente ampliado la
idea de fotomontaje, desde el poltico al social, declinando ese surrealismo tpicamente espaol que parece trasladarse de los cuadros de
Salvador Dal a sus impresiones fotogrficas. Faltan los precursores
como William Fox Talbot e Hippolyte Bayard con sus calotipos y
positivos directos sobre papel. Y todava: la escuela americana de la
posguerra que de la street photography desciende cada vez con mayor
eficacia a lo social: el lcido y romntico Robert Frank, la cruda y
tenaz Diane Arbus y el mordaz y sarcstico Lee Friedlander.
Y, sin embargo, no obstante la masiva presencia de tantos y tales
nombres recordmoslo: es sta una seleccin que, por lo tanto, ha
sacrificado muchos otros fotgrafos seguramente vlidos, lo que
ms llama la atencin es el asimismo abultado nmero de artistas
que estn por derecho adscritos al mbito del arte contemporneo,
algunos de stos ni siquiera fotgrafos, como Robert Smithson,
Robert Rauschenberg, Christian Boltanski, Sigmar Polke o Arnulf
Rainer, por no hablar de Gerhard Richter. Tambin ellos, sin embargo, muy comprometidos con la fotografa, si no directamente con el
medios s, ciertamente, con cuanto deriva de su utilizacin, en casos
a veces muy diferentes unos de otros (pensemos en las instalaciones
de Smithson o en las de Boltanski). Y no pueden ser considerados
puros fotgrafos, en sentido tradicional cuando menos, Hamish
Fulton o John Baldessari, Gordon Matta-Clark o Richard Prince,
hasta los ms jvenes Fischli y Weiss: tericos de la imagen ms bien,
de aquella imagen que hoy resume en s el concepto de comunicacin, evocando de inmediato todo aquello que est vinculado con
76
FILIPPO MAGGIA
77
Jean Laurent Sevilla. Vista general desde Triana, s.f. Albmina sobre papel, 23,4 x 32,4 cm. Copia de poca
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
80
Hippolyte Bayard Sin ttulo, Pars, 1850 Albmina sobre papel, 20,5 x 26,8 cm. Copia de poca
Depsito Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Carlos
81
William Fox Talbot Queens College, Oxford, 1845 Calotipo sobre papel pegado sobre cartn, 16 x 20,1 cm. Copia de poca
Depsito Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Carlos
82
William Fox Talbot Boulevards, Pars, 1843 Calotipo sobre papel pegado sobre cartn, 15,9 x 21,2 cm. Copia de poca
Depsito Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Carlos
83
William Fox Talbot Articles of Glass (Artculos de cristal), 1844 Calotipo sobre papel pegado sobre cartn, 13 x 15 cm. Copia de poca
Depsito Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Carlos
84
William Fox Talbot Articles of China (Artculos de porcelana), 1844 Calotipo sobre papel pegado sobre cartn, 13,5 x 17,8 cm. Copia de poca
(Lmina 3 del libro The Pencil of Nature)
Depsito Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Carlos
85
86
Pascual Prez Rodrguez Sin ttulo, Valencia, vista panormica, 1859 Albmina sobre papel, 18 x 85,5 cm. Copia de poca
Depsito Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Carlos
87
Pascual Prez Rodrguez Sin ttulo, Iglesia de los Santos Juanes, s.f. Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 21,4 x 16,5 cm. Copia de poca
Depsito Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Carlos
Pascual Prez Rodrguez Sin ttulo, Iglesia de los Santos Juanes, Valencia, 1859 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 21,2 x 16,4 cm. Copia de poca
Depsito Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Carlos
88
Pascual Prez Rodrguez Sin ttulo, Catedral de Valencia, s.f. Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 21,2 x 15,5 cm. Copia de poca
Depsito Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Carlos
Pascual Prez Rodrguez Sin ttulo, Catedral de Valencia, s.f. Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 21,7 x 16 cm. Copia de poca
Depsito Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Carlos
89
Pascual Prez Rodrguez Sin ttulo, s.f. Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 18,1 x 15,3 cm. Copia de poca
Depsito Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Carlos
90
Pascual Prez Rodrguez Sin ttulo, Puerta de los Apstoles, Catedral de Valencia, s.f. Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 21,9 x 15,6 cm. Copia de poca
Depsito Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Carlos
91
Francisco Goi Alfonso XIII jugando al golf, 1906 Gelatina de plata virada sobre papel, 26 x 36 cm. Copia realizada por Manuel Serra en 1986
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
Francisco Goi Jugando al tenis en la Granja, 1906 Gelatina de plata virada sobre papel, 25,8 x 35,7 cm. Copia realizada por Manuel Serra en 1986
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
92
Francisco Goi El Rey y el Infante Fernando, 1910 Gelatina de plata virada sobre papel, 25,8 x 35,7 cm. Copia realizada por Manuel Serra en 1986
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
Francisco Goi Familia Real, 1911 Gelatina de plata virada sobre papel, 25,8 x 35,7 cm. Copia realizada por Manuel Serra en 1986
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
93
Jean-Eugne Atget Maison 8, rue du Petit Pont, 1910 Albmina sobre papel, 21 x 18 cm. Copia de poca
Depsito Coleccin Ordez-Falcn, San Sebastin
94
Jean-Eugne Atget Hotel Simon Herouet dit Barbette, Rue du Fans Bourgeois, 1900-10 Albmina sobre papel, 21,8 x 17,8 cm. Copia de poca
Depsito Coleccin Ordez-Falcn, San Sebastin
95
Nadar Sarah Bernardt, ca. 1860 Albmina sobre papel, 14,5 x 10,7 cm. Copia de poca
96
Julia Margaret Cameron Beatrice, 1870 Albmina sobre papel, 34,4 x 26,5 cm. Copia de poca
Depsito Coleccin Ordez-Falcn, San Sebastin
97
Henry Peach Robinson Fading away (Evadindose), 1858 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 19,7 x 31,7 cm. Copia moderna
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
98
Ernest James Bellocq Sin ttulo, Nueva Orleans, 1911-13 Gelatina de plata sobre papel de ennegrecimiento directo a la luz, virado al cloruro de oro, 20,2 x 25,7 cm
99
Ernest James Bellocq Sin ttulo, Nueva Orleans, 1911-13 Gelatina de plata sobre papel de ennegrecimiento directo a la luz, virado al cloruro de oro sobre papel, 24,5 x 20,2 cm
Proceso realizado por Lee Friedlander en 1985 a partir del negativo original
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
100
Ernest James Bellocq Sin ttulo, Nueva Orleans, 1911-13 Gelatina de plata sobre papel de ennegrecimiento directo a la luz, virado al cloruro de oro, 25,7 x 20,2 cm
Ernest James Bellocq Sin ttulo, Nueva Orleans, 1911-13 Gelatina de plata sobre papel de ennegrecimiento directo a la luz, virado al cloruro de oro, 25,3 x 20,3 cm
Depsito Coleccin Ordez-Falcn, San Sebastin
101
Ernest James Bellocq Sin ttulo, Nueva Orleans, 1911-13 Gelatina de plata sobre papel de ennegrecimiento directo a la luz, virado al cloruro de oro, 20,2 x 25,7 cm
102
Ernest James Bellocq Sin ttulo, Nueva Orleans, 1911-13 Gelatina de plata sobre papel de ennegrecimiento directo a la luz, virado al cloruro de oro, 20,2 x 25,7 cm
103
Jos Esquirol Retrato de Pescador, La Escala, Gerona, 1931 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 40,7 x 25 cm. Copia realizada por Manuel Serra en 1986
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
104
Jos Esquirol Puerto de Pescadores en La Escala, Gerona, ca. 1900 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 32,5 x 44,7 cm. Copia realizada por Manuel Serra en 1986
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
105
Benito Monfort Eugenio Piot, 1851 Albmina sobre papel, 15,6 x 10,5 cm. Copia de poca
Depsito Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Carlos
106
Joaqun Pl i Janini Les Parques, s.f. Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 15,4 x 23,5 cm
Copia realizada en 1983 para la carpeta Fotgrafs catalans del Institut dEstudis Fotogrfics de Catalunya
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
107
Toms Montserrat Sin ttulo, 1900-25 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 11,8 x 8,8 cm. Copia realizada en 1977 por Toni Catany a partir del negativo original de vidrio sobre papel
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
Toms Montserrat Sin ttulo, 1900-25 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 17,7 x 12,8 cm. Copia realizada en 1977 por Toni Catany a partir del negativo original de vidrio
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
108
Toms Montserrat Sin ttulo, 1900-25 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 17,6 x 12,7 cm. Copia realizada en 1977 por Toni Catany a partir del negativo original de vidrio
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
Toms Montserrat Sin ttulo, 1900-25 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 17,5 x 11,3 cm. Copia realizada en 1977 por Toni Catany a partir del negativo original de vidrio
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
109
Alfred Stieglitz The Steerage (El entrepuente), 1907 Fotograbado sobre papel vellum japons, 33,4 x 26,3 cm
Incluido en el nmero 7-8 de la revista Camera Work, octubre 1911
Depsito Coleccin Ordez-Falcn, San Sebastin
110
Edouard Jean Steichen Flatiron Building (Edificio Flatiron), 1905 Goma bicromada y platino sobre papel, 35,2 x 27,5 cm. Copia de poca
111
Anton Stankowski Swing (Columpio), 1937 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 16,8 x 22 cm. Copia de poca
Depsito Coleccin Ordez-Falcn, San Sebastin
112
Anton Stankowski Winterwetter (Tiempo invernal), 1937 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 17,6 x 11,6 cm. Copia de poca
Depsito Coleccin Ordez-Falcn, San Sebastin
113
Anton Stankowski Cannons (Caones), 1927 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 37,9 x 29 cm. Copia de poca
114
Anton Stankowski Eye composition (Composicin de ojos), 1927 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 28,8 x 37,9 cm. Copia de poca
115
John Heartfield Zum Krisen-Parteitag der SPD (El congreso de la crisis del SPD), 1931 Huecograbado y tipografa a 1 tinta sobre papel, 38 x 28 cm
(Los veterinarios de Leipzig: Claro que le extraemos los colmillos al tigre, pero ante todo debemos curarlo y alimentarlo) Pgina 477 del n 24 de AIZ, Arbeiter-IllustrierteZeitung
Coleccin Marco Pinkus
John Heartfield 6 Millionen Naziwhler: Futter fr ein grosses Maul (Seis millones de votantes nazis: bocado para unas grandes fauces), 1930
Huecograbado y tipografa a 1 tinta sobre papel, 38 x 28 cm
Pgina 783 del n 40 de AIZ, Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung
Coleccin Marco Pinkus
116
John Heartfield Praktisches Christentum (Cristianismo prctico), 1932 Huecograbado y tipografa a 1 tinta sobre papel, 38 x 28 cm
Pgina 651 del n 28 de AIZ, Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung
John Heartfield Der Sinn des Hitlergrusses (El sentido del saludo hitleriano), 1932 Huecograbado y tipografa a 1 tinta sobre papel, 38 x 28 cm
Pgina 985 del n 42 de AIZ, Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung
Coleccin Marco Pinkus
117
John Heartfield Krieg und Leichen. Die letzte Hoffnung der Reichen (Guerra y cadveres. La ltima esperanza de los ricos), 1932
Huecograbado y tipografa a 1 tinta sobre papel, 38 x 28 cm Pgina 420-421 del n 18 de AIZ, Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung
Coleccin Marco Pinkus
118
John Heartfield Adolf, der bermensch. Schluckt Gold und redet Blech (Adolf, el superhombre. Traga oro y habla hojalata), 1932
Huecograbado y tipografa a 1 tinta sobre papel, 38 x 28 cm Pgina 675 del n 29 de AIZ, Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung
Coleccin Marco Pinkus
John Heartfield Hitlers Program (El programa de Hitler), 1933 Huecograbado y tipografa a 1 tinta sobre papel, 38 x 28 cm
(Ahora que el pueblo ya est bien untado, ya es hora de untar las casas!) Pgina 339 del n 29 de AIZ, Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung
Coleccin Marco Pinkus
119
John Heartfield Spieglein, Spieglein an der Wand, wer ist der Strkste im ganzem Land? Die Krise (Espejito, espejito Quin es el ms fuerte del pas? - La crisis), 1933
Huecograbado y tipografa a 1 tinta sobre papel, 38 x 28 cm
Pgina 562 del n 33 de AIZ, Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung
John Heartfield Goering, der Henker des Dritten Reichs (Goering, el verdugo del Tercer Reich), 1933 Huecograbado y tipografa a 1 tinta sobre papel, 38 x 28 cm
Pgina 609 del n 36 de AIZ, Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung (Nmero especial Incendio del Reichstag. Proceso / Contraproceso)
Coleccin Marco Pinkus
120
John Heartfield Wie im Mittelalter...so im Dritten Reich (Tal como en la Edad Media... As en el Tercer Reich), 1934 Huecograbado y tipografa a 1 tinta sobre papel, 38 x 28 cm
Pgina 352 del n 22 de AIZ, Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung
John Heartfield Der alte Wahlspruch im neuen Reich: BLUT UND EISEN (La vieja consigna en el nuevo Reich: sangre y hierro), 1934
Huecograbado y tipografa a 1 tinta sobre papel, 38 x 28 cm Pgina 147 del n 10 de AIZ, Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung
Coleccin Marco Pinkus
121
John Heartfield Deutsche Naturgeschichte (Historia natural alemana), 1934 Huecograbado y tipografa a 1 tinta sobre papel, 38 x 28 cm
Pgina 536 del n 33 de AIZ, Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung
Coleccin Marco Pinkus
John Heartfield Ruhe herrscht wieder in Barcelona (La tranquilidad vuelve a reinar en Barcelona), 1934 Huecograbado y tipografa a 1 tinta sobre papel, 38 x 28 cm
Pgina 680 del n 42 de AIZ, Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung
122
John Heartfield O Tannenbaum im deutschem Raum, wie krumm sind deine ste ! (Oh, rbol de Navidad de tierras alemanas, qu torcidas estn tus ramas!), 1934
Huecograbado y tipografa a 1 tinta sobre papel, 38 x 28 cm Pgina 848 del n 52 de AIZ, Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung
Coleccin Marco Pinkus
John Heartfield Goebbels-Rezept gegen die Lebensmittelnot in Deutschland (La receta de Goebbels contra la escasez de alimentos en Alemania ), 1935
Huecograbado y tipografa a 1 tinta sobre papel, 38 x 28 cm Pgina 688 del n 43 de AIZ, Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung
Coleccin Marco Pinkus
123
John Heartfield Hurrah, die Butter ist alle! (Albricias, se termin la mantequilla!), 1935 Huecograbado y tipografa a 1 tinta sobre papel, 38 x 28 cm
Pgina 816 del n 51 de AIZ, Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung
John Heartfield Hitler erzhlt Mrchen II (Hitler cuenta cuentos II), 1936 Huecograbado y tipografa a 1 tinta sobre papel, 38 x 28 cm
Pgina 160 del n 10 de AIZ, Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung
Coleccin Marco Pinkus
124
John Heartfield Madrid 1936. No pasarn!, Pasaremos!, 1936 Huecograbado y tipografa a 1 tinta sobre papel, 38 x 28 cm
Pgina 240 del n 15 de VI, Volks Illustrierte
Coleccin Marco Pinkus
John Heartfield Stimme aus dem Sumpf (La voz del pantano), 1936 Huecograbado y tipografa a 1 tinta sobre papel, 38 x 28 cm
Pgina 179 del n 12 de AIZ, Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung
Coleccin Marco Pinkus
125
John Heartfield Weg frei fr den Frieden! (Paso libre a la paz!), 1936 Huecograbado y tipografa a 1 tinta sobre papel, 38 x 28 cm Pgina 37 del n 3 de VI, Volks Illustrierte
Coleccin Marco Pinkus
John Heartfield Das ist das Heil, das sie bringen! (He aqu la salvacin que nos traen!), 1938 Huecograbado y tipografa a 1 tinta sobre papel, 38 x 28 cm
Sin paginar, del n 26 de VI, Volks Illustrierte
Coleccin Marco Pinkus
126
El Lissitzky Cubierta del libro de El Lissitzky Russland. Die Rekonstruktion der Architectur (Rusia. La reconstruccin de la arquitectura), 1930
Huecograbado y tipografa sobre cartn, 29 x 22,8 cm, realizada sobre la fotografa de Boris Ignatovich En la obra, 1929. Editorial Anton Scholl & Co, Viena
127
Cesar Domela Nieuwenhuis Hamburg Importplatz, 1929 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 22 x 23 cm. Copia de poca
128
Jan Kamman Sin ttulo, 1928 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 16,6 x 22,7 cm. Copia de poca
129
Dziga Vertov Sin ttulo de Ten Days that Shook the World (Diez das que conmovieron al mundo), 1920 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 14 x 20 cm. Copia de poca
130
Hans Richter Horse Race Symphony (Sinfona de una carrera de caballos), 1929 Fotograma perteneciente al film Rennsymphonie, Berln, 1928-29
Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 14,6 x 4,9 cm. Copia de poca
Gustav Klucis Industrial Portrait (Retrato industrial), 1931 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 29,4 x 23,6 cm. Copia de poca
131
Jos Leonard Sin ttulo, 1925 Collage de fotografas en gelatina de plata, materiales impresos, cartulinas y gouache sobre papel, 23,6 x 19 cm
132
Alexander Rodchenko Fotomontaje para ilustracin interior del libro Pro Eto. Ei i mne de Mayakovsky (De esto. Para ella y para mi), 1923
Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 16,5 x 10,9 cm. Copia de poca
133
Josep Renau Sin ttulo, 1939 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 11,5 x 14,9 cm. Copia de poca
Depsito Fundaci Josep Renau, Valencia
134
Josep Renau El hombre rtico, 1929 Fotomontaje original de fotografas en gelatina de plata sobre papel, recortadas y pegadas sobre cartn, 59 x 40 cm
Depsito Fundaci Josep Renau, Valencia
135
Man Ray Marcel Duchamp with his Hemispherical Glass (Marcel Duchamp con su vidrio semiesfrico), 1917 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 10,7 x 17,1 cm
Copia moderna
136
Man Ray Le merveilleux (Lo maravilloso), s.f. Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 13 x 15,1 cm. Copia de poca
137
Man Ray Secuencia mltiple de imgenes de la pelcula Emak Bakia, 1926 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 14,8 x 17 cm. Copia de 1927
138
Man Ray Rayographie (Rayograma), 1920-60 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 28 x 25 cm. Copia de poca
Depsito Coleccin Ordez Falcn, San Sebastin
139
Man Ray Le rideau transparent (La cortina transparente), 1935 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 28 x 13,4 cm. Copia de poca
140
Man Ray Rayographie (Rayograma), 1921 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 29,5 x 22,4 cm
Copia 33/50 realizada en 1980 por Kunstring Folkwang Essen y autorizada por Juliet Man Ray
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
141
Man Ray Elevage de Poussiere. Version II (Cultivo de polvo. Versin II), 1920 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 19,3 x 26 cm
142
Man Ray Rayographie revolver et lettres (Rayograma con revlver y cartas), 1920-60 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 27 x 21 cm. Copia de 1960
Depsito Coleccin Ordez Falcn, San Sebastin
143
Man Ray Mannequin fatigu (Maniqu fatigado), 1926 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 8,9 x 11,8 cm. Copia de poca por contacto directo del negativo
Man Ray Deux mannequins (Dos maniquies), 1926 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 8,7 x 11,7 cm. Copia de poca por contacto directo del negativo
144
Man Ray Le cadeau (El regalo), 1921 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 15,8 x 10,1 cm. Copia de 1955
145
Man Ray Lampshade, 1919 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 14 x 8,8 cm. Copia de poca
146
Gustav Klucis Dinamicheskii Gorod (Ciudad dinmica), 1919-20 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 29,2 x 22,2 cm. Copia de poca
147
John Heartfield Der Dada 3, 1920 Cubierta de la revista dirigida por Raoul Haussmann. Editado en abril por Ediciones Malik. Departamento Dad, Berln
Huecograbado y tipografa a 2 tintas sobre papel, 23,1 x 15,5 cm
148
Paul Citron Metropolis, s.f. Huecograbado sobre papel, 56,3 x 43,6 cm. Edicin 23/100
149
Marcel Duchamp Piston de courant dair (Pistn de corriente de aire), 1914 Gelatina de plata sobre acetato, 29,9 x 23,7 cm
Copia de 1965 a partir del positivo original de 1914. Edicin 14/100
150
Jaromr Funke Carpeta Reconstructing the Original: Czech Abstractions 1922-1935 (Reconstruccin del original: Abstracciones checas, 1922-1935), editada por J. Andel, impresin de Gary Schneider, AV Editions, Nueva York en 1994. Edicin 2/9
Sin ttulo, 1923-24 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 21,5 x 30 cm. Copia de 1994
153
Jaromr Funke Sin ttulo (Espiral) Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 49,5 x 36,8 cm. Copia de 1994
154
Jaromr Funke Composicin: cristales Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 22,5 x 29,8 cm. Copia de 1994
155
Jaroslav Rssler Fotografa I Gelatina de plata y collage sobre papel Forte, 37,5 x 31,5 cm. Copia de 1994
156
Jaroslav Rssler Abstraccin, 1923-94 Gelatina de plata sobre papel Ilford, 25,1 x 24,6 cm. Copia de 1994
157
Jaroslav Rssler Naturaleza muerta con altavoz, 1922-35 Gelatina de plata sobre papel Luminos, 23,8 x 23,9 cm. Copia de 1994
158
Eugen Wiskovsky Naturaleza muerta, 1929 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 27,3 x 24,7 cm. Copia de 1994
159
Eugen Wiskovsky Aislante, 1933 Gelatina de plata sobre papel Guilleminot, 28,2 x 38,2 cm. Copia de 1994
160
Eugen Wiskovsky Aislante II, 1935 Gelatina de plata sobre papel Agfa, 30,5 x 22,5 cm. Copia de 1994
161
Frantisek Tborsky Reflector, 1933 Gelatina de plata sobre papel Agfa, 22 x 30,7 cm. Copia de 1994
Frantisek Tborsky Granos de caf, 1934 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 13,5 x 18,5 cm. Copia de 1994
162
Frantisek Drtikol Sin ttulo, 1922-35 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 9,3 x 10,5 cm. Copia de 1994
163
El Lissitzky Cartel Al frente (Producid ms tanques), 1941 Litografa sobre tabla, 89 x 58 cm. nica copia conocida
164
Josep Renau Industria de guerra, 1936 Fotomontaje original de fotografas en gelatina de plata sobre papel coloreadas a mano, recortadas y pegadas sobre cartn, 47,5 x 33,5 cm
Depsito Fundaci Josep Renau, Valencia
165
166
Josep Renau No... let him play! (No...Dejadle jugar!), 1946 Fotomontaje sobre papel, 56,5 x 36,7 cm
Depsito Fundaci Josep Renau, Valencia
Josep Renau Feliz Ao, 1943 Fotomontaje original de fotografas en gelatina de plata sobre papel coloreadas a mano, recortadas y pegadas sobre cartn, 44,8 x 32 cm
Depsito Fundaci Josep Renau, Valencia
167
Josep Renau Stalingrado, 1942 Fotomontaje original de hojas impresas y gouache sobre cartn, 44,7 x 32,1 cm
Depsito Fundaci Josep Renau, Valencia
168
169
Paul Joostens Atom (tomo), 1930 Fotocollage de materiales impresos sobre papel, 51,5 x 24 cm
Paul Joostens Building (Edificio), 1930 Fotocollage de materiales impresos sobre papel, 51,5 x 24 cm
170
Pere Catal Pic Sin ttulo (tarjeta publicitaria), 1932 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 11,4 x 7,9 cm. Copia de poca
171
Heinz Loew Studies of Advertising with Light (Estudios de publicidad con luz), ca. 1928 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 12,2 x 17,2 cm. Copia de poca
172
Cas Oorthuys Sin ttulo, 1932 Collage de fotografas en gelatina de plata y tinta sobre papel, 34,3 x 18,7 cm
Cas Oorthuys Links front, 1934 Huecograbado y tipografa sobre papel, 23,9 x 16 cm Portada del n 3 de la revista, editada en Amsterdam
173
Piet Zwart Maschinenteile (Piezas de mquina), 1930 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 13 x 18 cm. Copia de poca
174
Pere Catal Pic Engranatge (Engranaje), 1929 Gelatina de plata virada sobre papel, 13,1 x 9,4 cm. Copia de poca
Boris Ignatovich Engines (Motores), 1930 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 24,2 x 16,6 cm. Copia de poca
175
Piet Zwart Sin ttulo. Cartel para telegramas de felicitacin con menbretes de G. Reuter, J. Jongent, J. Sluyters y F. Mees, 1931
Collage de materiales impresos y huecograbado sobre papel, 71 x 50 cm
176
Paul Schuitema Cartel para Centrale Bond Transport-Arbeiders, 1930 Offset sobre papel japn, 115,4 x 75,6 cm
177
Nicols Lekuona Sin ttulo, 1934 Collage de materiales impresos y tela sobre papel, 23,5 x 32 cm
178
Pere Catal Pic Desig de vol (Deseo de vuelo), 1931 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 27,2 x 37 cm. Copia positivada por su hijo Pere Catal i Roca en 1969
179
Georges Hugnet Prise de remords fait detrages rencontres de sable (Remordimientos hechos de extraos), de la serie La septime face du d, 1935
Collage de materiales impresos sobre papel, 32,5 x 25 cm
180
George Grosz Keep smiling (Sigue sonriendo), 1932 Collage de materiales impresos y tinta india sobre cartn, 60 x 43,5 cm
181
Wilhelm Freddie Sin ttulo, 1938 Collage de materiales impresos, cartones recortados y lpiz sobre cartn, 18,6 x 16 cm
182
Raoul Hausmann LActeur (El actor), 1946 Gelatina de plata, fotomontaje original de fotografas recortadas sobre papel, 24 x 17,8 cm
183
Edward Weston Tina Modotti. Nude on the Azotea (Tina Modotti. Desnudo en la azotea), 1923 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 17 x 23,5 cm. Copia de poca
Depsito Coleccin Ordez-Falcn, San Sebastin
184
Edward Weston Chambered Nautilus (Caracola), 1927 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 23,5 x 18,5 cm. Copia realizada por Cole Weston
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
185
Edward Weston Nude (Desnudo), 1927 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 23,4 x 17,7 cm. Copia realizada por Cole Weston
Depsito Coleccin Ordez-Falcn, San Sebastin
186
Edward Weston Pepper (Pimiento), 1930 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 24 x 19 cm. Copia realizada por Cole Weston
Depsito Coleccin Ordez-Falcn, San Sebastin
187
Jaromr Funke Die Kreise (Los crculos), 1929 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 29,7 x 23,8 cm. Copia de poca
188
Herbert List Goldfish bowl (Pecera), Santorini, 1937 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 40 x 30 cm. Copia realizada por el Herbert List Estate en 1994
Donacin D. Michael Scheler (The Herbert List Estate)
189
Lszl Moholy-Nagy Sin ttulo, 1925 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 17,9 x 23,8 cm. Copia de poca
190
Lszl Moholy-Nagy Drahtplastik (Pieza de alambre), 1928 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 13,3 x 18,2 cm. Copia de poca
191
Lszl Moholy-Nagy Sport Macht Appetit (El deporte abre el apetito), 1927 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 20,3 x 27,9 cm. Copia de poca
192
El Lissitzky Exposicin de prensa en Colonia, 1928 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 9 x 14 cm. Copia de poca
193
Vaclav Zraly Estudio para fachada, 1928 Fotocollage de materiales impresos y lpiz sobre papel y cartn, 20 x 15,2 cm
Vaclav Zraly Proyecto arquitectnico, 1931-32 Fotocollage y tinta aguada sobre cartn y croquis arquitectnico, 38,9 x 44,8 cm
194
Vaclav Zraly Sin ttulo (Arquitecto), 1920 Fotocollage y gouache sobre cartn, 13,7 x 8,9 cm
195
Stefan Themerson Carpeta Photo Images with and without camera (Foto-imgenes con y sin cmara). Publicado por Editions Ottezec, Londres, 1983
Imagen 1 Photogram (Fotograma), Konstancin, Polonia, 1928 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 18,2 x 11,3 cm. Copia de 1983
196
Stefan Themerson Imagen 2 Photogram (Fotograma), 1928 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 16,7 x 22,4 cm. Copia de 1983
197
Stefan Themerson Imagen 3 Photogram (Fotograma), 1928-29 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 17,9 x 21,2 cm. Copia de 1983
198
Stefan Themerson Imagen 4 Photogram (Fotograma), 1929 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 18 x 24,1 cm. Copia de 1983
199
Stefan Themerson Imagen 5 Photogram (Fotograma), 1928-29 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 8,7 x 14 cm. Copia de 1983
200
Stefan Themerson Imagen 6 Fotograma, un estudio para Moment Musical. Un corto sonoro de F. & S. Themerson, Varsovia, 1933
Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 23,3 x 17,6 cm. Copia de 1983
Stefan Themerson Imagen 7 Fotograma, un estudio para Moment Musical. Un corto sonoro de F. & S. Themerson, Varsovia, 1933
Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 23,6 x 17 cm. Copia de 1983
201
Stefan Themerson Imagen 9 Fotograma de The Eye & The ear. Pelcula sonora de F. & S. Themerson, Londres, 1944-45
Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 14,8 x 23 cm. Copia de 1983
202
Stefan Themerson Imagen 10 Self-portrait (Autorretrato), Londres, 1955 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 19,2 x 23,6 cm. Copia de 1983
203
Stefan Themerson Imagen 11 Fotogramas de la secuencia de imgenes para J.S. Bach Toccata en Calling Mr. Smith, 1928-55
Impresin cromognica, 18 x 12,6 cm. Copia de 1983
Stefan Themerson Imagen 12 Una secuencia del documental, refotografiado con luces de color a travs de positivo superpuesto, 1928-55
Impresin cromognica, 18 x 10,2 cm. Copia de 1983
204
Stefan Themerson Imagen 13 Fotograma original de las primeras pruebas de Calling Mr. Smith, por F. & S. Themerson, 1943
Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 4 x 9 cm. Copia de 1983
Stefan Themerson Imagen 8 Fotograma en movimiento de The Eye & The ear. Pelcula sonora de F. & S.Themerson, Londres, 1944-45
Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 15,9 x 20,1 cm. Copia de 1983
205
Ladislav Emil Berka Fachada, 1929-30 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 16,8 x 12,4 cm. Copia de poca
Ladislav Emil Berka Metro-Paris, 1929-30 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 18,1 x 13,2 cm. Copia de poca
206
Ladislav Emil Berka Neon-Werbung, 1929-30 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 11,7 x 13,7 cm. Copia de poca
207
Alfred Stieglitz Equivalent (cloud study) (Equivalente [estudio de nube]), ca. 1927 Gelatina de bromuro de plata sobre papel, 9,2 x 11,7 cm. Copia de poca
Depsito Coleccin Ordez-Falcn, San Sebastin
208
Vicente Martnez Sanz Sin ttulo, ca. 1934 Gelatina de bromuro de plata sobre papel, 29,5 x 22,9 cm. Copia de poca
Donacin Rosa Sabino Marcos, Valencia
209
Paul Schuitema SVG OPF (Positivo), 1928 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 16,2 x 26,2 cm. Copia de poca
Paul Schuitema SVG OPF (Negativo), 1928 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 16 x 22 cm. Copia de poca
210
Jaromr Funke Chimenea, figura y railes, s.f. Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 19,7 x 18,1 cm. Copia de poca
212
Jaromr Funke Hombre trabajando, s.f. Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 35,7 x 30 cm. Copia de poca
213
Kte Steinitz El diseador, ca. 1920 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 24,5 x 17 cm. Copia de poca
214
Claude Cahun Sin ttulo (Autorretrato en vitrina), ca. 1925 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 11,1 x 8,6 cm. Copia de poca
215
August Sander Pharmacist (Farmacutico), Linz, 1931 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 24,4 x 18,2 cm. Copia 41/400 realizada en 1980 por Gunther Sander para Aperture
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
216
Man Ray Picasso, 1932 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 28,5 x 21,7 cm. Copia realizada por Pierre Gassman, ca. 1980
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
217
Jaroslav Rssler Braon M., 1929 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 23,9 x 17,8 cm. Copia de poca
218
Man Ray Dal, s.f. Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 39,1 x 28,8 cm. Copia realizada por Pierre Gassmann, ca. 1980
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
219
Vicente Martnez Sanz Estudio, ca. 1932 Procedimiento Artigue sobre papel, 18,2 x 16,6 cm. Copia de poca
Donacin Rosa Sabino Marcos, Valencia
220
Alfonso Snchez Portela Vendedora de pavos, Plaza de Santa Cruz, Madrid, 1925 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 23,5 x 29,3 cm. Copia de poca
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
221
Helmar Lerski Sin ttulo, de la serie Metamorphosis through light (Metamorfosis a travs de la luz), 1936 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 29,4 x 23,5 cm. Copia de poca
222
Martn Jimnez Chambi Gigante de Paruro, Cuzco, 1929 Gelatina de plata virada a sepia sobre papel, 57,5 x 43,7 cm. Copia 5/9
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
223
Vicente Martnez Sanz Senos, ca. 1931 Gelatina de bromuro de plata sobre papel, 29,2 x 22,1 cm. Copia de poca
Donacin de Rosa Sabino Marcos, Valencia
224
Andr Kertsz Distorsin n 41, 1933 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 23,8 x 17,7 cm. Copia de poca
225
Frantisek Drtikol Desnudo con cordn y perla, 1927-29 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 14 x 8,9 cm. Copia de poca
226
Franz Roh Sin ttulo, ca. 1928 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 42 x 59 cm. Copia de poca
227
Jaroslav Fabinger Retrato, 1930 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 22 x 16 cm. Copia de poca
Depsito Coleccin Ordez Falcn, San Sebastin
228
Herbert List In the morning II (Por la maana II), Atenas, 1936 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 28,8 x 19,3 cm. Copia de 1952
229
Agustn Jimnez Espinosa Movimiento, ca. 1930 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 23,9 x 18 cm. Copia de poca
230
Agustn Jimnez Espinosa Cemento, 1931 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 24,2 x 17 cm. Copia de poca
Agustn Jimnez Espinosa Plstica, 1931 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 24,5 x 16,7 cm. Copia de poca
231
Agustn Jimnez Espinosa Sin ttulo, ca. 1930 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 21,6 x 23,6 cm. Copia de poca
232
Agustn Jimnez Espinosa Flores, ca. 1930 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 18,5 x 23,9 cm. Copia de poca
233
Agustn Jimnez Espinosa Serpientes, ca. 1930 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 18 x 23,7 cm. Copia de poca
234
Agustn Jimnez Espinosa Ritmo, ca. 1931 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 17,3 x 22,8 cm. Copia de poca
Depsito Coleccin Ordez-Falcn, San Sebastin
235
Valentina Kulagina Estudios para un poster obrero, 1930 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 14,3 x 10 cm; 14,4 x 9,8 cm. Copias de poca
236
Valentina Kulagina Krasnaia Niva, 1930 Huecograbado y tipografa sobre papel, 30,2 x 22,9 cm Portada del n 12 de la revista
237
Valentina Kulagina Stroim (Estamos construyendo), 1929 Huecograbado y tipografa sobre papel a partir del fotomontaje original, 14,7 x 10,4 cm
Valentina Kulagina De Groudslagen van Het tweede Vijfjaarsplan, 1932 Huecograbado y tipografa sobre papel, 22,2 x 14,1 cm
Cubierta del libro de J. Huijts, editado en la Haya
238
Valentina Kulagina Mujeres trabajadoras - Fortalecer la brigada de choque, 1931 Cartel en huecograbado sobre papel, 98 x 71 cm
239
Alexander Rodchenko Joven pionera, 1930 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 25 x 18,7 cm. Copia moderna realizada por la familia Rodchenko
Donacin familia Rodchenko
Alexander Rodchenko Radioescucha, 1932 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 12,5 x 15,4 cm. Copia moderna realizada por la familia Rodchenko
Donacin familia Rodchenko
240
Alexander Rodchenko Radioescucha, 1932 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 20,5 x 29,5 cm. Copia moderna realizada por la familia Rodchenko
Donacin familia Rodchenko
Alexander Rodchenko Brbara, 1935 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 18,3 x 21,1 cm. Copia moderna realizada por la familia Rodchenko
Donacin familia Rodchenko
241
Alexander Rodchenko Salto, 1934 Gelatina de plata, 17,8 x 10,5 cm. Copia de poca
Depsito Coleccin Ordez-Falcn, San Sebastin
242
Alexander Rodchenko Columna Dinamo, 1935 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 47,7 x 58,7 cm. Copia de poca
243
Alexander Rodchenko Sin ttulo (Pioneros), 1930 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 16,4 x 23,8 cm. Copia moderna realizada por la familia Rodchenko
Donacin familia Rodchenko
244
Alexander Rodchenko Pionero tocando la trompeta, 1930 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 16 x 23,2 cm. Copia moderna realizada por la familia Rodchenko
Donacin familia Rodchenko
245
Alexander Rodchenko Calle desde arriba, 1928 Gelatina de plata, 29,2 x 24,8 cm. Copia de poca
Depsito Coleccin Ordez-Falcn, San Sebastin
246
Marjorie Content Desde Washington Square, Nueva York, ca. 1928 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 9,5 x 7,1 cm. Copia de poca
247
Alexander Rodchenko Nios en un bote, 1933 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 18,9 x 26,8 cm. Copia moderna realizada por la familia Rodchenko
Donacin familia Rodchenko
248
Alexander Rodchenko Fuente pblica, 1932 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 16 x 22 cm. Copia moderna realizada por la familia Rodchenko
Donacin familia Rodchenko
249
Andr Kertsz Ecultura de yunque, 1929 Gelatina de plata sobre papel pegada sobre cartn, 22,5 x 16,6 cm. Copia de poca
250
Julio Gonzlez Cabeza de la Monserrat, s.f. Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 30,4 x 30,2 cm. Copia de poca
Donacin Carmen Martnez y Viviane Grimminger, Pars
251
Constantin Brancusi Loiseau (El pjaro), 1919-25 Gelatina de bromuro de plata sobre papel, 19,3 x 13,4 cm. Copia de poca
252
Constantin Brancusi Atelier, Portrait de Mme. L. et Platon (Taller, retrato de Mme. L. y Platn), ca. 1930 Gelatina de bromuro de plata sobre papel, 36,5 x 27,2 cm
Copia de poca
253
Walker Evans Black Fury (Furia negra), 1930 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 24,5 x 40 cm. Copia de poca
254
Walker Evans Cinema, de la serie La Habana, 1933 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 20,2 x 15,7 cm. Copia realizada por el Archivo Walker Evans, ca. 1989
Donacin del Legado de Walker Evans
255
Walker Evans Allie Mae Borroughs, wife of a cotton sharecropper (Allie Mae Borroughs, esposa de un aparcero del algodn), Alabama, 1936
Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 20,2 x 15,2 cm. Copia de poca. Edicin 1/36
Depsito Coleccin Ordez-Falcn, San Sebastin
Walker Evans Coal Dock Worker with Cigarrette (Trabajador del muelle de carbn con cigarrillo) de la serie La Habana, 1933 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 20,1 x 15,6 cm
Copia realizada por el Archivo Walker Evans, ca. 1989
Donacin del Legado de Walker Evans
256
Walker Evans Terra Alta, Virginia, July 4th. Homecoming Festival, 1935 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 14,2 x 14,3 cm. Copia de poca
257
Walker Evans Untitled (Sin ttulo), Nueva York, ca. 1929 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 15,5 x 23 cm. Copia de poca
Depsito Coleccin Ordez-Falcn, San Sebastin
258
Walker Evans Havana citizen (Ciudadano de La Habana), de la serie La Habana, 1933 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 23,6 x 12,7 cm
Copia realizada por el Archivo Walker Evans, ca. 1989
Donacin del Legado de Walker Evans
259
Walker Evans Small Factory (Pequea fbrica) de la serie La Habana, 1933 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 16,8 x 27,5 cm
Copia realizada por el Archivo Walker Evans, ca. 1989
Donacin del Legado de Walker Evans
260
Walker Evans Washroom and Dining Area of Floyd Burroughs (Lavabo y comedor de la casa de Floyd Burrough), Home-Hale County, Alabama, 1936
Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 34,2 x 24,1 cm. Copia realizada a partir de la Coleccin de la biblioteca del Congreso, ca. 1970
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
Walker Evans Roadside Stand, Vicinity Birmingham (Parada de carretera, a las afueras de Birmingham), Alabama, 1936 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 34,3 x 26,7 cm
Copia realizada a partir de la Coleccin de la biblioteca del Congreso, ca. 1970
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
261
Agust Centelles Oss Pau Casals, ca. 1934 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 35,7 x 25,9 cm. Copia realizada por Manuel Serra en 1992
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
262
Agust Centelles Oss Altercados en la plaza de San Jaime, Barcelona, 1936 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 23,8 x 29,8 cm. Copia realizada por el autor, ca. 1970
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
263
Agust Centelles Oss Voluntarios, julio, 1936 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 29,9 x 23,9 cm. Copia realizada por el autor, ca. 1970
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
264
Agust Centelles Oss Guardias de Asalto ocupan Belchite, 1937 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 23,8 x 29,8 cm. Copia realizada por el autor, ca. 1970
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
265
Agust Centelles Oss Teruel, 1937 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 23,8 x 29,8 cm. Copia realizada por el autor, ca. 1970
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
266
Agust Centelles Oss Sin ttulo, s.f. Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 25,3 x 35,8 cm. Copia realizada por el autor, ca. 1970
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
267
Robert Capa Saludo miliciano, despedida de las Brigadas Internacionales, 1938 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 18 x 23,9 cm. Copia de poca
Donacin Carmen Martnez y Viviane Grimminger, Pars
268
David Seymour (Chim) Miliciano del ejrcito republicano, Extremadura, 1936 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 50,5 x 40,8 cm
Copia de 2003 realizada a partir de un internegativo por Magnum Photos
Donacin Magnum Photos, Pars
269
Walter Rosenblum Camp for Mutilated Spaniards. Spanish Refugees (Campamento para mutilados espaoles. Refugiados espaoles), Toulouse, Francia, 1946
Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 21,3 x 16,5 cm. Copia moderna
Depsito Coleccin Ordez-Falcn, San Sebastin
270
Francisco Gmez Banco de piedra en el Jardn Botnico, 1956 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 22,7 x 33,6 cm. Copia ca. 1985
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
271
Aaron Siskind Sin ttulo, 1948 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 15,8 x 10,9 cm. Copia de poca
Depsito Coleccin Ordez Falcn, San Sebastin
272
Brassa Les lzardes (Las lagartijas), 1931-33 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 17 x 27,7 cm. Copia de poca
Depsito Coleccin Ordez-Falcn, San Sebastin
273
Ralph Steiner Nehi-Daingneault, 1929-79 Gelatina de plata sobre cartn, 24,2 x 19 cm. Copia de poca
274
Ralph Steiner Gypsy Rose Lee and her Girls (La gitana Rose Lee y sus chicas), 1950-51 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 21,1 x 25,3 cm. Copia de poca
275
Manuel lvarez Bravo Parbola ptica, 1931 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 19 x 19 cm. Copia de poca
276
Herbert List Opticians Display (Consulta del ptico), Pars, 1936 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 30 x 40 cm. Copia realizada por el Herbert List Estate entre 1998 y 1999
Donacin D. Michael Scheler (The Herbert List Estate)
277
Paul Strand Young Woman and Boy (Muchacha y chico) Toluca, de la serie Photographs of Mexico (Fotografas de Mxico), 1933
Fotograbado sobre papel, barnizado y teido a mano, 32 x 40,5 cm
lbum de fotograbados con hoja de presentacin de Leo Hurwitz firmada por el artista. Publicados por Virginia Stevens, Nueva York, 1940. Edicin de 250 ejemplares
280
Paul Strand Boy (Muchacho), Uruapan, de la serie Photographs of Mexico (Fotografas de Mxico), 1933 Fotograbado sobre papel, barnizado y teido a mano, 40,5 x 32 cm
lbum de fotograbados con hoja de presentacin de Leo Hurwitz firmada por el artista. Publicados por Virginia Stevens, Nueva York, 1940. Edicin de 250 ejemplares
Paul Strand Boy (Muchacho), Hidalgo, de la serie Photographs of Mexico (Fotografas de Mxico), 1933 Fotograbado sobre papel, barnizado y teido a mano, 40,5 x 32 cm
lbum de fotograbados con hoja de presentacin de Leo Hurwitz firmada por el artista. Publicados por Virginia Stevens, Nueva York, 1940. Edicin de 250 ejemplares
281
Paul Strand Calvario, Patzcuaro, de la serie Photographs of Mexico (Fotografas de Mxico), 1933 Fotograbado sobre papel, barnizado y teido a mano, 40,5 x 32 cm
lbum de fotograbados con hoja de presentacin de Leo Hurwitz firmada por el artista. Publicados por Virginia Stevens, Nueva York, 1940. Edicin de 250 ejemplares
Paul Strand Virgin (Virgen), San Felipe, Oaxaca, de la serie Photographs of Mexico (Fotografas de Mxico), 1933
Fotograbado sobre papel, barnizado y teido a mano, 40,5 x 32 cm
lbum de fotograbados con hoja de presentacin de Leo Hurwitz firmada por el artista. Publicados por Virginia Stevens, Nueva York, 1940. Edicin de 250 ejemplares
282
Paul Strand Church (Iglesia), Coapiaxtla, de la serie Photographs of Mexico (Fotografas de Mxico), 1933 Fotograbado sobre papel, barnizado y teido a mano, 40,5 x 32 cm
lbum de fotograbados con hoja de presentacin de Leo Hurwitz firmada por el artista. Publicados por Virginia Stevens, Nueva York, 1940. Edicin de 250 ejemplares
283
Paul Strand Man (Hombre), Tenancingo, de la serie Photographs of Mexico (Fotografas de Mxico), 1933 Fotograbado sobre papel, barnizado y teido a mano, 40,5 x 32 cm
lbum de fotograbados con hoja de presentacin de Leo Hurwitz firmada por el artista. Publicados por Virginia Stevens, Nueva York, 1940. Edicin de 250 ejemplares4.560
Paul Strand Woman and Boy (Mujer y muchacho), Tenancingo, de la serie Photographs of Mexico (Fotografas de Mxico), 1933
Fotograbado sobre papel, barnizado y teido a mano, 40,5 x 32 cm
lbum de fotograbados con hoja de presentacin de Leo Hurwitz firmada por el artista. Publicados por Virginia Stevens, Nueva York, 1940. Edicin de 250 ejemplares
284
Paul Strand Women of Santa Anna (Mujeres de Santa Ana), Michoacan, de la serie Photographs of Mexico (Fotografas de Mxico), 1933
Fotograbado sobre papel, barnizado y teido a mano, 32 x 40,5 cm
lbum de fotograbados con hoja de presentacin de Leo Hurwitz firmada por el artista. Publicados por Virginia Stevens, Nueva York, 1940. Edicin de 250 ejemplares
285
Paul Strand Woman (Mujer), Patzcuaro, de la serie Photographs of Mexico (Fotografas de Mxico), 1933 Fotograbado sobre papel, barnizado y teido a mano, 40,5 x 32 cm
lbum de fotograbados con hoja de presentacin de Leo Hurwitz firmada por el artista. Publicados por Virginia Stevens, Nueva York, 1940. Edicin de 250 ejemplares
Paul Strand Man with a Hoe (Hombre con azada Los Remedios, de la serie Photographs of Mexico (Fotografas de Mxico), 1933
Fotograbado sobre papel, barnizado y teido a mano, 40,5 x 32 cm
lbum de fotograbados con hoja de presentacin de Leo Hurwitz firmada por el artista. Publicados por Virginia Stevens, Nueva York, 1940. Edicin de 250 ejemplares
286
Paul Strand Girl and Child (Mujer y nio), Toluca, de la serie Photographs of Mexico (Fotografas de Mxico), 1933
Fotograbado sobre papel, barnizado y teido a mano, 40,5 x 32 cm
lbum de fotograbados con hoja de presentacin de Leo Hurwitz firmada por el artista. Publicados por Virginia Stevens, Nueva York, 1940. Edicin de 250 ejemplares
Paul Strand Men of Santa Anna (Hombre de Santa Ana), Michoacan, de la serie Photographs of Mexico (Fotografas de Mxico), 1933
Fotograbado sobre papel, barnizado y teido a mano, 40,5 x 32 cm
lbum de fotograbados con hoja de presentacin de Leo Hurwitz firmada por el artista. Publicados por Virginia Stevens, Nueva York, 1940. Edicin de 250 ejemplares
287
Paul Strand Plaza, State of Puebla (Plaza, estado de Puebla), de la serie Photographs of Mexico (Fotografas de Mxico), 1933
Fotograbado sobre papel, barnizado y teido a mano, 40,5 x 32 cm
lbum de fotograbados con hoja de presentacin de Leo Hurwitz firmada por el artista. Publicados por Virginia Stevens, Nueva York, 1940. Edicin de 250 ejemplares
288
Paul Strand Gateway (Portal), Hidalgo, de la serie Photographs of Mexico (Fotografas de Mxico), 1933 Fotograbado sobre papel, barnizado y teido a mano, 40,5 x 32 cm
lbum de fotograbados con hoja de presentacin de Leo Hurwitz firmada por el artista. Publicados por Virginia Stevens, Nueva York, 1940. Edicin de 250 ejemplares
289
Paul Strand Cristo with Thorns (Cristo con espinas), Huexotla, de la serie Photographs of Mexico (Fotografas de Mxico), 1933
Fotograbado sobre papel, barnizado y teido a mano, 40,5 x 32 cm
lbum de fotograbados con hoja de presentacin de Leo Hurwitz firmada por el artista. Publicados por Virginia Stevens, Nueva York, 1940. Edicin de 250 ejemplares
Paul Strand Cristo, Tlacochoaya, Oaxaca, de la serie Photographs of Mexico (Fotografas de Mxico), 1933 Fotograbado sobre papel, barnizado y teido a mano, 40,5 x 32 cm
lbum de fotograbados con hoja de presentacin de Leo Hurwitz firmada por el artista. Publicados por Virginia Stevens, Nueva York, 1940. Edicin de 250 ejemplares
290
Paul Strand Cristo, Oaxaca, de la serie Photographs of Mexico (Fotografas de Mxico), 1933 Fotograbado sobre papel, barnizado y teido a mano, 40,5 x 32 cm
lbum de fotograbados con hoja de presentacin de Leo Hurwitz firmada por el artista. Publicados por Virginia Stevens, Nueva York, 1940. Edicin de 250 ejemplares
291
Paul Strand Woman and Baby (Mujer y nio) Hidalgo, de la serie Photographs of Mexico (Fotografas de Mxico), 1933
Fotograbado sobre papel, barnizado y teido a mano, 32 x 40,5 cm
lbum de fotograbados con hoja de presentacin de Leo Hurwitz firmada por el artista. Publicados por Virginia Stevens, Nueva York, 1940. Edicin de 250 ejemplares
292
Paul Strand Near Saltillo (Cerca de Saltillo), de la serie Photographs of Mexico (Fotografas de Mxico), 1932 Fotograbado sobre papel, barnizado y teido a mano, 32 x 40,5 cm
lbum de fotograbados con hoja de presentacin de Leo Hurwitz firmada por el artista. Publicados por Virginia Stevens, Nueva York, 1940. Edicin de 250 ejemplares
293
Anton Bruehl Madre de las montaas, 1932 Colotipo sobre papel Moulmade, 18 x 23 cm
Carpeta Photographs of Mexico (Fotografas de Mxico), 1932. Del libro publicado por Delphic Studios, Nueva York en 1933. Edicin 169/1000
294
Anton Bruehl Hands of the Potter (Manos de alfarero), 1932 Colotipo sobre papel Moulmade, 23 x 18 cm
Carpeta Photographs of Mexico (Fotografas de Mxico), 1932. Del libro publicado por Delphic Studios, Nueva York en 1933. Edicin 169/1000
295
296
Anton Bruehl Mother and Child of Taxco (Madre e hijo de Taxco), 1932 Colotipo sobre papel Moulmade, 23 x 18 cm
Carpeta Photographs of Mexico (Fotografas de Mxico), 1932. Del libro publicado por Delphic Studios, Nueva York en 1933. Edicin 169/1000
Anton Bruehl Young Girls of the Pueblo (Nias de Pueblo), 1932 Colotipo sobre papel Moulmade, 23 x 18 cm
Carpeta Photographs of Mexico (Fotografas de Mxico), 1932. Del libro publicado por Delphic Studios, Nueva York en 1933. Edicin 169/1000
297
Berenice Abbot Northen Maine, country store (Norte de Maine, tienda rural), 1930 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 24 x 19,5 cm. Copia de poca
Depsito Coleccin Ordez-Falcn, San Sebastin
298
Berenice Abbot White Steps of Baltimore (Escalones blancos en Baltimore), 1930 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 25,3 x 20,1 cm. Copia de poca
Depsito Coleccin Ordez-Falcn, San Sebastin
299
Berenice Abbot Hoboken Ferry Terminal, Barclay Steet Ferry, ca. 1938 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 19,1 x 24,2 cm. Copia de poca
Depsito Coleccin Ordez-Falcn, San Sebastin
300
Berenice Abbot Pine and Henry Street, Manhattan, 1936 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 27,8 x 35,4 cm. Copia de poca
Depsito Coleccin Ordez-Falcn, San Sebastin
301
Jindrich Styrsky Sin ttulo, 1935 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 9,4 x 8,8 cm. Copia de poca
Fotografa para el libro Na Jehlch Techto Dni
Jindrich Styrsky Kommode Glocke, ca. 1940 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 9,5 x 9 cm. Copia de poca
302
Jindrich Styrsky Sin ttulo (Fotomontaje n 11 de la edicin de lujo de Emilie Comes to Me in a Dream), 1933 Gelatina de bromuro de plata sobre papel, 15,5 x 12,3 cm
Copia de poca
Depsito Coleccin Ordez-Falcn, San Sebastin
303
Joaquim Gomis Marea baixa Mont Saint Michel (Marea baja, Mont Saint Michel), 1936 Gelatina de plata, 26,5 x 26,3 cm
Copia 9/30 realizada en 1987 por Joan Fontcuberta y Jorge Ribalta y supervisada por el autor sobre papel. Centre de Creaci Fotogrfica de Barcelona para la Fundaci Joan Mir
Depsito Coleccin Ordez-Falcn, San Sebastin
304
Joaquim Gomis La Torre Eiffel, Pars, ca. 1936 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 34 x 34 cm. Copia de poca
Depsito Coleccin Ordez-Falcn, San Sebastin
305
Horacio Coppola Avenida Presidente Roque Senz Pea y Suipacha (centro), 1936 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 16,7 x 21,6 cm. Copia de poca
306
Horacio Coppola Bartolom Mitre y Montevideo, 1936 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 22,2 x 21,7 cm. Copia de poca
307
Horacio Coppola Villa Miseria sobre el Riachuelo (sur), 1936 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 28,7 x 19,1 cm. Copia realizada por Sanguinetti en 1996
Donacin Horacio Coppola
308
Grete Stern Crdoba y Esmeralda, Buenos Aires, 1951-52 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 23 x 30,5 cm. Copia de 1993
309
Grete Stern Buenos Aires, 1937 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 30,5 x 24 cm. Copia de 1993
310
Harry Callahan Chicago, 1950 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 43 x 35,7 cm. Copia de poca
Depsito Coleccin Ordez-Falcn, San Sebastin
311
Vicente Martnez Sanz Despus de la lluvia, 1932 Gelatina de bromuro de plata sobre papel, 22 x 29 cm. Copia de poca
Donacin Rosa Sabino Marcos, Valencia
312
Vicente Martnez Sanz Tras la tormenta, ca. 1928 Bromoleo sobre papel, 20,5 x 28,5 cm. Copia de poca
Donacin Rosa Sabino Marcos, Valencia
313
Vicente Martnez Sanz Sin ttulo, ca. 1931 Gelatina de bromuro de plata sobre papel, 29,3 x 22,8 cm. Copia de poca
Donacin Rosa Sabino Marcos, Valencia
314
Vicente Martnez Sanz Sin ttulo, ca. 1934 Gelatina de bromuro de plata sobre papel, 23,8 x 29,3 cm. Copia de poca
Donacin Rosa Sabino Marcos, Valencia
315
Gustav Klucis Boceto para fotomontaje Bernem, Igolbnyi, dolg (Devolvamos la deuda del carbn a nuestro pas), 1930
Gelatina de plata (tres piezas pegadas) y lpiz sobre papel, 14,4 x 23,7 cm. Copias de poca
316
Gustav Klucis Competicin socialista. Siguiendo las normas de las mejores brigadas de choque alcanzaremos el xito de la campaa de la cosecha, 1931
Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 16,7 x 11,9 cm. Copia de poca
317
Gustav Klucis El trabajo de la URSS es un trabajo de honestidad (J.Stalin), 1931 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 16,5 x 11,6 cm. Copia de poca
318
Gustav Klucis La lucha por la cosecha bolchevique es la lucha por el socialismo, 1931 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 16,5 x 11,8 cm. Copia de poca
319
320
Gustav Klucis Spartakiada, 1928 Fotomontaje de 9 postales impresas a color sobre cartn, 15,3 x 10,5 cm
321
Gustav Klucis Boceto para el cartel La URSS es la brigada de choque del proletariado del mundo entero, 1931
Fotocollage de fotografas en gelatina de plata, gouache y lpiz sobre papel, 10,5 x 13,6 cm. Copia de poca
Gustav Klucis Boceto para el cartel La URSS es la brigada de choque del proletariado del mundo entero, 1931
Gelatina de plata recortada sobre papel, 15,6 x 12,3 cm. Copia de poca
Gustav Klucis Boceto para el cartel La URSS es la brigada de choque del proletariado del mundo entero, 1931
Gelatina de plata recortada sobre papel, 16,8 x 12,6 cm. Copia de poca
322
Gustav Klucis Boceto para el cartel La URSS es la brigada de choque del proletariado del mundo entero, 1931
Fotocollage de fotografas en gelatina de plata, materiales impresos, cartulinas recortadas, lpiz y tinta sobre papel, 28,6 x 23,6 cm
323
Gustav Klucis La URSS es la brigada de choque del proletariado del mundo entero (CCCP), 1931 Cartel en huecograbado sobre papel, 142 x 103 cm
324
Gustav Klucis Boceto para el cartel Saludo al gigante mundial recin unido al trabajo, Dneprostoi, 1930-31
Collage de materiales impresos y fotografas en gelatina de plata sobre cartulina, 15 x 11 cm
325
Gustav Klucis Transporte, 1929 Huecograbado y tipografa sobre papel, 73,5 x 50,7 cm
326
Gustav Klucis Cartel para una exposicin antiimperialista, 1931 Litografa Photo Offset (2 hojas montadas juntas) sobre papel de Japn, 138 x 104,2 cm
327
Gustav Klucis Boceto para el cartel del Metro de Mosc, 1931-32 Fotocollage de fotografas en gelatina de plata, recortes de cartn, lpiz y acuarela sobre papel, 26 x 18 cm
328
Gustav Klucis Todo Mosc construye el metro, 1934 Cartel en huecograbado sobre papel, 136,5 x 91 cm
329
Gustav Klucis 1 de mayo. A la lucha por el plan quinquenal, 1931 Cartel en huecograbado y tipografa sobre papel, 101,5 x 70,1 cm
330
Gustav Klucis Hacia el trmino del plan quinquenal la colectivizacin de la URSS tiene..., 1932 Cartel en huecograbado sobre papel, 141 x 95,5 cm
331
2.243
Gustav Klucis La victoria del socialismo en nuestro pais est garantizada, 1932 Litografa sobre papel, 103 x 72 cm
Gustav Klucis Bajo la bandera de Lenin, por la construccin socialista, 1930 Cartel en huecograbado sobre papel, 99,7 x 71,7 cm
332
Gustav Klucis 1 de mayo: da de la solidaridad proletaria internacional, 1930 Cartel en huecograbado sobre papel, 104,5 x 73 cm
333
Leopoldo Pomes Elsa, 1962 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 35,5 x 29,5 cm. Copia de 1982
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
Bill Brandt Nude (Desnudo), 1950 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 23,2 x 19,8 cm. Copia de poca
Depsito Coleccin Ordez Falcn, San Sebastin
336
Edouard Boubat Lella, 1947 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 40,4 x 30,3 cm. Copia realizada por Philippe Salan, ca. 1980
Donacin Philippe Salan
337
Horst P. Horst Mainboucher Corset, Pars, 1939 Gelatina de platino paladio sobre papel, 35,5 x 28 cm. Edicin P.A. de 25
Depsito Coleccin Ordez-Falcn, San Sebastin
338
Irving Penn Woman with Roses (Mujer con rosas), Nueva York, 1950 Gelatina de platino paladio sobre papel y aluminio, 54,5 x 36,5 cm. Copia 13/40 de 1979
Depsito Coleccin Ordez Falcn, San Sebastin
339
Bruce Davison Sin ttulo, de la serie East 100th Street, Nueva York, 1968 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 22,7 x 17,7 cm. Copia de poca
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
340
Irving Penn Gypsy Family, Spain (Familia gitana, Espaa), 1966 Gelatina de platino paladio sobre papel Arches, 39,6 x 39,4 cm. Copia 8/28 de 1968
Depsito Coleccin Ordez Falcn, San Sebastin
341
Edouard Jean Steichen La Reina Victoria Eugenia, ca. 1947 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 24,5 x 20,3 cm. Copia de poca
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
342
Diane Arbus Three Circus Ballerinas (Tres bailarinas circenses), Nueva Jersey, 1964 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 36,5 x 36 cm. Copia de poca
Depsito Coleccin Ordez-Falcn, San Sebastin
343
Eugene Smith The Spinner (La hiladora), 1951 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 31,8 x 21,2 cm
Copia n 107 realizada por J. Goodman y autorizada por J. Morris para Aperture
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
344
Gabriel Cuallad Fif, Arriondas, Asturias, 1960 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 26,4 x 21,8 cm. Copia de poca
345
Gabriel Cuallad Nio, ramo de flores, Plaza Mayor, Madrid, 1959 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 38 x 36 cm. Copia de 1995
Donacin del artista
346
Gabriel Cuallad Bodega, Sobrepiedra, Asturias, 1958 Gelatina de clorobromuro de plata sobre papel, 22,7 x 20,5 cm. Copia de poca
Donacin del artista
347
Gabriel Cuallad Vieja en la estacin de Atocha, Madrid, 1957 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 46 x 29 cm. Copia de 1995
Donacin del artista
348
Gabriel Cuallad Minero Asturiano, La Folguera, Asturias, 1958 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 33 x 36 cm. Copia de 1995
Donacin del artista
349
Gabriel Cuallad Nio con peridico, Cauce ro Turia, Valencia, 1958 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 27 x 25 cm. Copia de 1995
Donacin del artista
350
Gabriel Cuallad Nios movidos, Pueblo de Castilla, 1958 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 37 x 36 cm. Copia de 1995
Donacin del artista
351
Gabriel Cuallad Entierro, Puente de Toledo, Madrid, 1957 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 43 x 32 cm. Copia de 1995
Donacin del artista
352
Gabriel Cuallad Clemente con triciclo, 1958 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 15,3 x 27,3 cm. Copia de poca
353
Gabriel Cuallad Consuelo, Madrid, 1958 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 35 x 26 cm. Copia de 1995
Donacin del artista
354
Sergio Larrain Valparaso, 1963 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 38 x 23,9 cm. Copia realizada por Pictorial Service, Pars, 1998
Donacin Magnum Photos, Pars
355
Sergio Larrain Valparaso, 1963 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 26,2 x 38 cm. Copia realizada por Pictorial Service, Pars, 1998
Donacin Magnum Photos, Pars
356
Ramn Masats Los Sanfermines, Pamplona, 1957 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 25,7 x 17,6 cm. Copia ca. 1985
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
357
Leonardo Cantero Herradero, 1959 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 16,8 x 38,5 cm. Copia ca. 1985
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
358
Gonzlo Juanes Familia en la fiesta de Todos los Santos, de la serie Punto final, 1963 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 21,4 x 29,7 cm. Copia de poca
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
359
Marc Riboud Beijin antic shop (Tienda en Pekn), 1965 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 20,2 x 30 cm. Copia moderna
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
360
Ricard Terr Oporto, 1956 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 34 x 40 cm. Copia de poca
361
Fernando Gordillo Retrato de una madre, 1963 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 28 x 21 cm. Copia de poca
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
362
Weegee Fires (Fuegos), 1940 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 33,5 x 26,4 cm. Copia de poca
363
Nicols Mller Carpeta Recuerdo a Marruecos, 1992. Ediciones lvaro Daz Huici. Edicin 35/50
Bailarina Tajara, Larache, 1942 Gelatina de plata sobre papel baritado Ilford, 30,5 x 40,2 cm
364
Lisette Model Nicks Night Club, 1944 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 27,5 x 34,8 cm. Copia de poca
365
George S. Zimbel Hoods up (Caps levantados), Nueva York, 1954 Gelatina de plata sobre papel baritado, 28,4 x 42 cm. Copia realizada por el autor en 1998
366
George S. Zimbel Irish Dance Hall, The Bronx (Sala de baile irlandesa, Bronx), Nueva York, 1954 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 29,8 x 42,8 cm. Copia de 1997
Donacin del artista
367
William Klein Sin ttulo, 1996 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 19 x 29,5 cm, pegada en una pgina del libro Citizen Sidel, con 6 fotografas de William Klein
y un texto de Jerome Charyn. 32 pginas firmadas por los autores. Edicin 37/80 de Julio Soto, Madrid
368
Gerardo Vielba Retrato en Tertre, Pars, 1962 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 24 x 30 cm. Copia realizada por Gabriel Cuallad en 1987
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
369
Xavier Miserachs La bvila de Llinars (Horno de Linares), 1952 Gelatina de plata sobre papel Valca de tonos clidos, 37,2 x 27,8 cm. Copia de poca
Depsito Coleccin Ordez Falcn, San Sebastin
370
Jos Miguel de Miguel El pan nuestro, Puerto de pescadores, Cartagena, 1963 Gelatina de plata sobre papel pegada sobre cartn, 48,4 x 38,2 cm. Copia de poca
371
Juan Dolcet El Empalao, Valverde de la Vera, 1968 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 30 x 24 cm. Copia ca. 1985
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
372
Francesc Catal i Roca Publicitat (Publicidad), 1954 Gelatina de plata, 25,5 x 26,7 cm
Copia de 1987, revelada por Pere Formiguera y Marn Garca con supervisin del autor, sobre papel. Edicin 14/30
Carpeta Mestres de la fotografia espanyola. Edita la Fundaci Joan Mir-Centre dEstudis dArt Contemporani, Barcelona, 1987
373
Henri Cartier-Bresson Vive la France: Bal de lcole Polytechnicien lOpra (Viva Francia: Baile de la Escuela Politcnica en la pera), Pars, 1968
Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 25,4 x 16,7 cm. Copia de poca
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
374
Ralph Gibson Sin ttulo, de la serie The somnambulist, 1969 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 31,8 x 21 cm. Copia realizada en 1987
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
375
Herbert List Reisfelder bei Valencia (Campos de arroz en Valencia), mayo, 1951 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 28,6 x 22 cm. Copia de poca
Donacin The Herbert List Estate
376
Robert Frank Trolley (Tranva), Nueva Orleans, 1955-56 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 30,4 x 40,3 cm. Copia de poca
377
Robert Frank Approaching New York Harbour, SS Mauretania (Aproximacin al puerto de Nueva York, SS Mauretania), 1952-53
Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 40,9 x 50,7 cm. Copia de poca
378
Robert Frank Elevator (Ascensor), Miami Beach, 1955-56 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 27,7 x 35,3 cm. Copia de poca
379
380
Robert Frank Mississippi Bridge at St. Louis (Puente del Mississippi en San Luis), 1947-48 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 40,4 x 100 cm. Copia de 1985
381
Robert Frank Untitled, Park Avenue scene (Sin ttulo, escena de Park Avenue), 1950 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 24 x 34 cm. Copia de poca
382
Robert Frank Political Rally (Mitin poltico), Chicago, 1955-56 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 40,4 x 30,4 cm. Copia de poca
383
Robert Frank US 285, Nuevo Mxico, 1955-56 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 40,4 x 30,4 cm. Copia de poca
384
Robert Frank Look, Londres, 1950 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 27,7 x 35,5 cm. Copia de poca
385
Robert Frank Coney Island, 4 de julio, 1958 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 18,5 x 27,8 cm. Copia de poca
386
Robert Frank Valencia, 1951 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 24 x 30,2 cm. Copia de poca
387
Grete Stern Sueo n 13: Consentimiento, Buenos Aires, 1949 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 50 x 35 cm. Copia de poca
388
Grete Stern Sueo n 16: Sirena de mar, Buenos Aires, ca. 1950 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 20,7 x 29 cm. Copia realizada por Ricardo Sanguinetti en 1996
Donacin de la artista, Buenos Aires
389
Grete Stern Sueo n 31: Made in England, Buenos Aires, 1950 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 50 x 33,5 cm. Copia de poca
Grete Stern Sueo n 11: Nio flor, Buenos Aires, 1948 Gelatina de plata, 27,3 x 22,3 cm. Copia de 1996 realizada por Ricardo Sanguinetti
Donacin de la artista, Buenos Aires
390
Grete Stern Sueo n 20: Perspectiva, Buenos Aires, 1949 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 50 x 35 cm. Copia de poca
391
Grete Stern Sueo n 1: Artculos elctricos para el hogar, Buenos Aires, ca. 1950 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 25,7 x 22,2 cm
Copia realizada por Ricardo Sanguinetti en 1996
Donacin de la artista, Buenos Aires
Grete Stern Sueo n 28: Amor sin ilusin, Buenos Aires, 1951 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 50 x 40 cm. Copia de poca
392
Grete Stern Sueo n 2: En el Andn, Buenos Aires, 1949 Gelatina de plata, 19,7 x 28,9 cm. Copia de 1996 realizada por Ricardo Sanguinetti
Donacin de la artista, Buenos Aires
393
Francesc Jarque Calle Caballeros, 1963 Gelatina de plata sobre papel varitado, 45 x 29,9 cm. Copia de 2000
Adquirida con aportacin de las Cortes Valencianas
394
Sigmar Polke Polkes Peitsche (El ltigo de Polke), 1968 Tcnica mixta, cuerda, madera, gelatina de plata sobre papel y cinta aislante, 70 x 46 cm
395
Antonio Saura Mditation du Magma 2 (Meditacin del Magma 2), 1961 Fotocollage de hojas de revista pintadas con leo y tintas pegadas sobre cartulina, 71,5 x 98,7 cm
396
Richard Hamilton My Marilyn (Mi Marilyn), 1965 Serigrafa a 6 tintas sobre papel, 51,5 x 61,5 cm. Edicin P.A.
397
Josep Renau AWL 2. The Big Parade (El gran desfile), 1957-65
Fotomontaje original de fotografas en gelatina de plata y coloreadas a mano, recortadas y pegadas sobre cartn, 65,5 x 51 cm
Depsito Fundaci Josep Renau, Valencia
Josep Renau AWL 13. Just married (Recin casados), 1957
Fotomontaje original de fotografas en gelatina de plata sobre papel coloreadas a mano, recortadas y pegadas sobre cartn, 51,7 x 38,7 cm
Depsito Fundaci Josep Renau, Valencia
398
Josep Renau AWL 19. Neon alienation (La alienacin del nen), 1963
Fotomontaje origial de fotografas en gelatina de plata sobre papel coloreadas a mano, recortadas y pegadas sobre cartn, 51,1 x 38,7 cm
Depsito Fundaci Josep Renau, Valencia
Josep Renau AWL 43. A gift for hungry People (Un donativo para los pueblos hambrientos), 1956
Fotomontaje original de fotografas en gelatina de plata sobre papel coloreadas a mano, recortadas y pegadas sobre cartn, 51 x 38,5 cm
Depsito Fundaci Josep Renau, Valencia
399
400
406
Ouka Lele Alberto y Alfredo son gemelos, 1984 Proceso reversible al blanqueo de plata sobre papel, 35 x 45 cm
Copia de ca. 1986 a partir de un original en blanco y negro coloreado a mano
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
407
Amrica Snchez Sector circular con avin, de la serie Iconografa moderna, 1980-85 Proceso reversible al blanqueo de plata sobre papel, 39 x 12 cm
Copia de poca, edicin 3/7
Donacin del artista
408
Eduard Ibez Magraner El mur, 1979 Proceso reversible al blanqueo de plata sobre papel ilfochrome a partir del fotomontaje original, 44 x 44 cm. Copia de 2000
Adquirida con aportacin de las Cortes Valencianas
409
Jorge Rueda Lolafile, 1973 Gelatina de plata, fotomontaje por impresin ptica sobre papel, 40,2 x 30,3 cm. Copia de poca
410
Joan Fontcuberta Per qu no li dius (Por qu no le dices), 1973 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 36,1 x 26,8 cm. Copia de 1976. Edicin 11/25
411
Lee Friedlander New York City, 1974 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 38,2 x 56,6 cm. Copia de 1992
Donacin Zabriskie Gallery-Lee Friedlander, Nueva York
412
Manuel Falces Lpez Huida a Egipto, 1985 Proceso reversible al blanqueo de plata sobre papel, 50,8 x 62 cm. Copia de 1991
413
Enrique Carrazoni Sin ttulo, de la serie Exilio, 1979 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 30,6 x 40,5 cm. Copia de 2000
Adquirida con aportacin de las Cortes Valencianas
414
Julio Mitchel Sin ttulo, Coney Island, Nueva York, de la serie T me amas?, ca. 1965 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 41 x 26,2 cm. Copia de 1990
415
Rafael Navarro Dptico n 23, 1979 Gelatina de plata virada a sepia sobre papel, 25,9 x 18 cm. Copia 25/50 de poca
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
416
Bernard Plossu Paris, 1970 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 76,5 x 78,5 cm. Copia de 1997
Donacin del artista
417
Robert Smithson King Kong meets the Gem of Egypt (King Kong se encuentra con la Gema de Egipto), 1972
Collage de fotografa y pgina de huecograbado sobre papel, 26,5 x 45 cm
418
Robert Rauschenberg Photem Series I (28), 1981 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, montado sobre aluminio y aglomerado, 158,1 x 155,6 cm
419
Gordon Matta-Clark Underground Paris: Ntre Dame (Pars subterrneo: Ntre Dame), 1977
Proceso reversible al blanqueo de plata y cinta adhesiva sobre papel, 221,5 x 50 cm
420
Daro Villalba Mstico, 1974 Gelatina de plata y tcnica mixta sobre lienzo, 200 x 160 cm
421
Hamish Fulton Comb fell, 1976 Letraset y gelatina de plata sobre papel, 100 x 120,5 cm. Copia de poca
422
Peter Fischli / David Weiss Lufthansa Cargo, L.A., 1988-89 Proceso reversible al blanqueo de plata sobre papel, 120 x 180 cm. Copia de poca
423
424
Joan Fontcuberta Els paisatges de Joanot Martorell (Los paisajes de Joanot Martorell) del proyecto Gandia i la Safor: Els paisatges de Joanot Martorell, 1990
Gelatina de plata virada sobre papel, 33,5 x 285,3 cm. Pieza original de poca
Coleccin Ayuntamiento de Ganda - IVAM Institut Valenci dArt Modern, Generalitat Valenciana
425
Jos Calvo Novell Vers B.B., de la serie Gimnasia para gansters, 1990 Fotomontaje de materiales impresos pegados sobre papel, 30 x 19,5 cm
Adquirida con aportacin de las Cortes Valencianas
426
John Goto Regions estrangeres (Regiones extranjeras), de la serie La Albufera, una visi tangencial, 1985 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 53,4 x 35,4 cm. Copia de poca
427
Jorge Galindo Sin ttulo, 1994 Fotomontaje original de hojas impresas recortadas y pegadas sobre cartn, 39 x 28,7 cm
428
Ciuco Gutirrez Sueos de domingo, 1997 Impresin cromognica sobre papel, 37 x 30 cm. Copia 30/35 de poca
Donacin Universidad de Cantabria, Aula de Fotografa
429
Jos Mara Mendoza Rodrguez Deseos domesticados, 1994 Impresin cromognica sobre papel, 30,5 x 22,9 cm. Copia de 2001 a partir del fotomontaje original
Adquirida con aportacin de las Cortes Valencianas
430
Alfonso Herriz Serrano La mirada de piedra, 1992 Proceso reversible al blanqueo de plata sobre papel, 70 x 70 cm. Copia de 1995
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
431
Josep Renau Madre Tierra, 1975 Fotomontaje original de fotografas en gelatina de plata sobre papel, recortadas y pegadas sobre cartn, 73 x 59 cm
Depsito Fundaci Josep Renau, Valencia
432
433
434
435
Robert Frank Bad Dream, March 28th, 1978 in Vienna and Los Angeles (Pesadilla, 28 de marzo, 1978 en Viena y Los ngeles), 1978
Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 50,7 x 40,5 cm. Copia de poca
Robert Frank Mabou footage (Pelcula de Mabou), 1977 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 50,5 x 40,7 cm. Copia de poca
436
Robert Frank New York (Still life on window) (Nueva York [Naturaleza muerta en ventana]), 1972 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 50,5 x 40,5 cm. Copia de poca
437
Alberto Garca Alix Elena Mar en estado de buena esperanza, 1988 Gelatina de plata virada al selenio y tintada, 36,5 x 36 cm. Copia de poca
Depsito Coleccin Ordez-Falcn, San Sebastin
438
Robert Mapplethorpe Lisa Lyon, 1982 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 48 x 38 cm. Copia 1/10 de poca
Depsito Coleccin Ordez-Falcn, San Sebastin
439
440
Ana Teresa Ortega Sin ttulo, de la serie Configuraciones, 1986 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 40 x 40,3 cm
Adquirida con aportacin de las Cortes Valencianas
441
Pierre Molinier Pantomime Celeste (Pantomima Celeste), ca. 1970 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 18 x 13 cm. Copia moderna
Donacin Mme. Franoise Molinier
442
Cindy Sherman Untitled n 91 (Sin ttulo, n 91), 1981 Impresin cromognica sobre papel, 60 x 122 cm
443
Rafael Levenfeld Autorretrato, 1985 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 47,2 x 46,7 cm. Copia de 1993
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
444
Richard Avedon Red Owens, Oil Field worker, Velma, Oklahoma (Red Owens, trabajador del campo petrolfero, Velma, Oklahoma), 1980
Gelatina de plata sobre papel pegada sobre aluminio, 143 x 115 cm. Copia de 1985
Depsito Coleccin Ordez-Falcn, San Sebastin
445
Jordi Guillumet Sin ttulo, 1987 Goma bicromatrada sobre papel acuarela, 102,5 x 70 cm. Copia de poca
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
446
Arnulf Rainer Kopfputz (Autorretrato), 1970-74 leo sobre gelatina de plata sobre papel, pegado sobre madera, 122,3 x 87 cm
447
Robert Frank Self-portrait, Aug. 1979 (Autorretrato agosto 1979), Mabou, Nueva Escocia (Seament/Cement), 1979 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 40,6 x 50,6 cm. Copia de poca
448
Jan Groover Untitled (Shapes) (Sin ttulo [formas]), 1986 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 49,7 x 40,7 cm. Edicin 2/15
Depsito Coleccin Ordez-Falcn, San Sebastin
451
Carlos Prez Siquier Marbella, 1990 Proceso reversible al blanqueo de plata sobre papel, 30 x 29,7 cm. Copia de poca
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
452
Chema Madoz Paleta, 1994 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 60,8 x 50,5 cm. Copia 5/15 de poca
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
453
Rafael Sanz Lobato Sin ttulo, de la serie Fetiches y smbolos, 1990 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 13,6 x 18,4 cm. Copia de poca n 11/75
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
454
Manuel Vilario Sula Bussana, 1985 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 38 x 38 cm. P. A. de poca
Depsito Coleccin Ordez-Falcn, San Sebastin
455
Antonio Tabernero de la Casa Huida, 1993 Impresin cromognica sobre papel, 30,5 x 26,2 cm. Copia de poca
Donacin Hofmann, S.L., Valencia
456
Alberto Schommer Apocalipsis, de la serie Civilizaciones, 1987 Proceso reversible al blanqueo de plata, 60,4 x 50 cm. Copia realizada en 1990
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
457
Derek Bennett El Perell, Valencia, de la serie LAlbufera, visi tangencial, 1985 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 25,9 x 31,9 cm. Copia de poca
458
Andreas Mller-Pohle Sin ttulo, de la serie LAlbufera, visi tangencial, 1985 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 28 x 26,1 cm. Copia de poca
459
Hiroshi Sugimoto SUG 939 Villa Savoye. Le Corbusier, 1998 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 50,8 x 63,5 cm. Copia de poca. Edicin 19/25
460
Manuel Esclusa Castells de la Safor IX, del proyecto Gandia i la Safor: Els paisatges de Joanot Martorell, 1990 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 43,1 x 43,4 cm. Copia de poca
Coleccin Ayuntamiento de Ganda - IVAM Institut Valenci dArt Modern, Generalitat Valenciana
461
Carlos Cnovas Burjassot, de la serie Valencia, Valencia, 1997 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 66 x 85 cm. Copia de poca
462
Gabriele Basilico Valencia, 2000 Gelatina de plata sobre papel pegado sobre aluminio, 134 x 180 cm. Copia de 2001 realizada por Mario de Estefanis y supervisada por el autor
463
464
Wim Wenders The road to Emmaus, near Jerusalem (El camino a Emas, cerca de Jerusaln), 2000 Impresin cromognica sobre papel, 178 x 447 cm. Edicin 6/6
465
scar Molina Prez Sin ttulo, 1991 Gelatina de plata virada sobre papel, 30 x 24 cm. Copia de 1995
Donacin Hofmann, S.L., Valencia
466
Ian Wallace La piscina Valencia II, 1990 Acrlico e impresin cromognica sobre lienzo, 152 x 152 cm
467
Gerhard Richter Kanarische landschaften (Campos canarios), 1971 Heliograbados aguatinta sobre papel, 39,3 x 49,6 cm. Edicin 1/50
468
John Baldessari Four Wounded Men (One Noble) with Observer, 1989 Gelatina de plata y pintura de vinilo sobre papel, 170,5 x 122,5 x 2,5 cm
469
470
Dis Berlin La capital del desierto, 1994 Impresin cromognica sobre papel, 100 x 290 cm. Copia de 1997. Edicin 1
471
Lothar Baumgarten Unsichtbar (Invisible), de la serie Montaa. La gran Sabana, Venezuela, 1977 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 39 x 58 cm. Copia de 1985
472
Philipp Scholz-Rittermann Caminos de luz, Geluhauren, Alemania, 1987 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 21,7 x 29,8 cm. Copia de poca
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
473
Pio Guerendiain Fuya I, 1982 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 21,2 x 21 cm. Copia de poca
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
474
Jos Ramn Cuervo Arango rboles, ramas y hojas n 2, Gijn, 1981 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 15,7 x 23,6 cm. Copia de 1982
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
475
Bernd y Hilla Becher Kaser-Steimel bei Hachenburg, 1988 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 51,9 x 60,9 cm. Copia de poca. Edicin 2/5
476
Thomas Struth Calle de Montello, Castello, Venecia, 1990 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 46 x 56 cm. Copia 1/10, de 1991
Depsito Coleccin Ordez-Falcn, San Sebastin
477
Manolo Laguillo La Safor, del proyecto Gandia i La Safor: Els paisatges de Joanot Martorell, 1990 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 31 x 45,6 cm. Copia de poca
Coleccin Ayuntamiento de Ganda - IVAM Institut Valenci dArt Modern, Generalitat Valenciana
478
Franco Fontana Sin ttulo, 1979 Impresin cromognica sobre papel, 17 x 26 cm. Copia de poca. Edicin 11/50
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
479
Enrique Algarra Mart Cine de verano, Benidorm (Alicante), 2000 Proceso reversible al blanqueo de plata sobre papel Ilfochrome, 25,7 x 36,3 cm. Copia de poca
Adquirida con aportacin de las Cortes Valencianas
480
Vicente del Amo Albufera al vesprejar, de la serie LAlbufera visi tangencial, 1985 Impresin cromognica sobre papel, 28,2 x 28,2 cm. Copia de poca
481
Manuel Sonseca Vega Leirosa, Portugal, 1991 Proceso reversible al blanqueo de plata sobre papel, 33,9 x 50,3 cm. Copia de 1994
Donacin Hofmann, S.L., Valencia
482
Richard Misrach Serie Louisiana, 1979 Impresin cromognica sobre papel, 38,3 x 45,1 cm. Copia realizada en 1982
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
483
Juan Manuel Castro Prieto El Mirn, 1989 Gelatina de plata virada sobre papel, 30,5 x 24 cm. Copia de 1992
Donacin Hofmann, S.L., Valencia
484
Cristina Garca Rodero Platges de Gandia, del proyecto Gandia i la Safor: Els paisatges de Joanot Martorell, 1990
Gelatina de plata sobre papel, virada a sepia, 31 x 45,7 cm. Copia de poca
Coleccin Ayuntamiento de Ganda - IVAM Institut Valenci dArt Modern, Generalitat Valenciana
485
Koldo Chamorro Sin ttulo, de la serie Convivir en Valencia, mayo, 1998 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 28,1 x 42,2 cm. Copia de poca
486
Fernando Herriz Porto, 1978 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 23,2 x 34,2 cm. Copia realizada en 1990
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
487
Manuel beda Gallart Puerto de Silla, de la serie LAlbufera, visi tangencial, 1985 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 26 x 26 cm. Copia de poca
488
Philippe Salan La vie de chteau (La vida en el castillo), 1972 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 39,9 x 29,8 cm. Copia de poca
Donacin Philippe Salan, Pars
489
Diana Blok Vista de lAlbufera, de la serie LAlbufera, visi tangencial, 1985 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 19,7 x 27,2 cm. Copia de poca
490
Paulo Nozolino El Perell, de la serie LAlbufera, visi tangencial, 1985 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 17,3 x 26 cm. Copia de poca
491
Ramn Zabalza Mocejn, Toledo, 1986 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 19,5 x 29,1 cm. Copia de poca
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
492
Ursula Schulz-Dornburg Lugares de trnsito, Ashtarak - Alagyaz. Armenia, 1997-2001 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 34,5 x 44 cm
P. A., copia de 1998 (tiraje de 5 copias)
Donacin de la artista
493
Cristbal Hara Sin ttulo, de la serie 4 cosas de Espaa, Castilla-Len, 1980 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 34,7 x 52,7 cm. Copia de 1988
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
494
496
Jos Ramn Cancer Hipnosis, de la serie Abstracciones, 1970 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 24 x 30,5 cm. Copia de poca
Adquirida con aportacin de las Cortes Valencianas
497
Jos Garca Poveda Desmaya Eso, La Habana, 1993 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 22,9 x 30,8 cm. Copia de 2001
Adquirida con aportacin de las Cortes Valencianas
498
Josep Merita (Morelo) Cadaqus, 1976 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 23,5 x 17 cm. Copia de poca. Edicin 5/25
Adquirida con aportacin de las Cortes Valencianas
499
Nan Goldin Cookie at Tin Pan Alley (Cookie en el Tin Pan Alley), Nueva York, 1983 Proceso reversible al blanqueo de plata sobre papel, 40 x 60 cm. Copia 9/25
Depsito Coleccin Ordez-Falcn, San Sebastin
500
Carmen Calvo Rafael, 1999 Gelatina de plata sobre papel y arcilla, 115 x 80 cm
Depsito Coleccin Ordez-Falcn, San Sebastin
501
Juan Urrios Ortopedia R8, 1992 Proceso reversible al blanqueo de plata sobre papel, 175 x 120 cm. Copia de poca
Depsito Coleccin Ordez-Falcn, San Sebastin
502
John Coplans Self-portrait (Frieze n 2) (Autorretrato [Friso n 2]), 1994 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 190,5 x 315 cm. Copia 1/6 de poca
Depsito Coleccin Ordez-Falcn, San Sebastin
503
Marta Sents Amisa y Joseph frente a La Lonja, Valencia, 1998 Impresin cromognica sobre papel Crystal Archive, 28,5 x 38,7 cm. Copia de poca
504
Xurxo S. Lobato Sin ttulo, de la serie Galicia, sitio distinto, 1989-90 Proceso reversible al blanqueo de plata sobre papel, 35 x 45,6 cm. Copia de 1992
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
505
Toni Catany A Ghana, al mercat de Kumasi (En Ghana, en el mercado de Kumasi), 1995 Polaroid transportado sobre papel, 24 x 18,8 cm. P.A., n 2, de 1996
Depsito Coleccin Ordez-Falcn, San Sebastin
506
Thomas Ruff Portrait, Man (Retrato de hombre), 1988 Impresin cromognica sobre papel, 180 x 140 cm. Copia 3/4
Depsito Coleccin Ordez-Falcn, San Sebastin
507
Susy Gmez Sin ttulo, 1995 Impresin cromognica sobre papel pegada sobre madera, 250,5 x 182,5 cm. Copia de poca
Depsito Coleccin Ordez-Falcn, San Sebastin
508
Richard Prince Four women with their backs to the camera (Cuatro mujeres de espaldas ha la cmara), 1980
Impresin cromognica sobre papel, 66,5 x 101 cm. Copias de poca
Donacin Barbara Gladstone
509
Gabriel Cuallad Gitanilla, Sama de Langreo, Asturias, 1978 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 29 x 44 cm. Copia de 1995
Donacin del artista
510
Gabriel Cuallad Nia jugando en el patio del restaurante la Casa Gran, Ganda, del proyecto Gandia i la Safor. Els paisatges de Joanot Martorell, 1990
Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 31,5 x 46,5 cm. Copia de poca
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
511
Gabriel Cuallad Sin ttulo, de la serie LAlbufera, visi tangencial, 1985 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 20 x 22,5 cm. Copia de poca
512
Gabriel Cuallad Mi madre, Massanassa, Valencia, 1974 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 43 x 28 cm. Copia de 1995
Donacin del artista
513
Gabriel Cuallad Mano de Mara Jess, Madrid, 1994 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 25 x 37 cm. Copia de poca
Donacin del artista
514
Gabriel Cuallad Jos Luis, El Fitu, 1975 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 39,5 x 62,2 cm. Copia de poca
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
515
Humberto Rivas Merc, 1986 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 45 x 37 cm. Copia de 1996
516
Javier Vallhonrat Ouka Lele, 1983 Gelatina de plata sobre lienzo, 61 x 49,8 cm. Copia de poca
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
517
518
Pere Formiguera Mare (Madre), 1991-2000 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 109 obras, 18 x 24 cm cada una
Depsito Coleccin Ordez-Falcn, San Sebastin
519
Luis Poirot Aaron Siskind, fotgrafo, 1978 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 27,6 x 27,5 cm. Copia de poca
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
520
Jorge Ribalta Sin ttulo (n 291-2), 1994 Gelatina de bromuro de plata sobre tela de algodn, 101 x 102 x 4 cm. Copia 1/1 de poca
Depsito Coleccin Ordez-Falcn, San Sebastin
521
Juan Manuel Daz Burgos Pedro, 1989 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 30,3 x 24,6 cm. Copia de 1993
Donacin Hofmann, S.L., Valencia
522
Manolo Rodrguez Retratos de la buena gente, Valencia, 1998 Gelatina de plata virada a sepia sobre papel, 21 x 23,5 cm. Copia de poca
523
Jos Penalba Partido de Rugby, El Saler, Valencia, 5 de noviembre, 1995 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 30,6 x 40,4 cm. Copia de 2000
Adquirida con aportacin de las Cortes Valencianas
524
Carles Francesc Polizn africano, Valencia, 1985 Gelatina de plata sobre papel baritado, virada al selenio, 24 x 30,5 cm. Copia de 2000
Adquirida con aportacin de las Cortes Valencianas
525
Manuel Molines El Sol, 1990 Gelatina de plata sobre papel baritado, 40,5 x 30,4 cm. Copia de 2000
Adquirida con aportacin de las Cortes Valencianas
526
Julin Lladosa Teresa, 2003 Gelatina de bromuro de plata virado al selenio sobre papel, 24 x 30,5 cm. Copia de poca
Donacin del artista
527
Paco Mart Sin ttulo, 1987 Gelatina de clorobromuro de plata sobre papel, 14,1 x 21 cm. Copia de poca
Adquirida con aportacin de las Cortes Valencianas
528
Jos Vicente Aleixandre Gitana con su caballo, 1985 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 30 x 39,1 cm. Copia de 2001
Adquirida con aportacin de las Cortes Valencianas
529
Xavier Moll La Casa de la Caridad, Valencia, 1998 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 19 x 28 cm. Copia de poca
530
Francesc Vera Xiqueta a la fira, Albalat de la Ribera, Valencia, 1986 Gelatina de plata virada al selenio sobre papel, 30,4 x 40,3 cm. Copia de poca
Adquirida con aportacin de las Cortes Valencianas
531
Gervasio Snchez Nios jugando en Sarajevo, 1992-94 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 23,8 x 30,5 cm. Copia de 1995
Donacin Hofmann, S.L., Valencia
532
Jos Antonio Carrera Buscador de oro, Colombia, 1992 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 23,9 x 30,5 cm. Copia de 1994
Donacin Hofmann, S.L., Valencia
533
Andr Gelpke Christine, 1977 Gelatina de plata sobre papel, 32,6 x 22 cm. Copia de poca
Depsito Coleccin Gabriel Cuallad
534
NDICEDEARTISTAS
Berenice Abbot
Northen Maine, country store (Norte de Maine,
tienda rural), 1930
Gabriele Basilico
Valencia, 2000
Rep. pg. 463
Lothar Baumgarten
Unsichtbar (Invisible), de la serie Montaa. La gran
Sabana, Venezuela, 1977
Rep. pg. 472
Diane Arbus
Three Circus Ballerinas (Tres bailarinas circenses),
Nueva Jersey, 1964
Rep. pg. 343
Hippolyte Bayard
Sin ttulo, Pars, 1850
Rep. pg. 81
Jean-Eugne Atget
Hotel Simon Herouet dit Barbette, Rue du Fans
Bourgeois, 1900-10
Rep. pg. 95
Maison 8, rue du Petit Pont, 1910
Rep. pg. 94
Richard Avedon
Red Owens, Oil Field worker, Velma, Oklahoma
(Red Owens, trabajador del campo petrolfero,
Velma, Oklahoma), 1980
Rep. pg. 445
John Baldessari
Four Wounded Men (One Noble) with Observer, 1989
Rep. pg. 469
NDICE DE ARTISTAS
535
Derek Bennett
El Perell, Valencia, de la serie LAlbufera, visi
tangencial, 1985
Rep. pg. 458
Diana Blok
Vista de lAlbufera, de la serie LAlbufera, visi
tangencial, 1985
Rep. pg. 490
Christian Boltanski
La Rserve des Suisses Morts (La reserva de los
suizos muertos), 1991
Rep. pgs. 402-03
Edouard Boubat
Lella, 1947
Rep. pg. 337
Constantin Brancusi
Loiseau (El pjaro), 1919-25
Rep. pg. 252
Bruce Davison
Sin ttulo, de la serie East 100th Street, Nueva York, 1968
Rep. pg. 340
Anton Bruehl
Madre de las montaas, 1932
Carpeta Photographs of Mexico (Fotografas de
Mxico), 1932. Del libro publicado por Delphic
Studios, Nueva York en 1933. Edicin 169/1000
Rep. pg. 294
Claude Cahun
Sin ttulo (Autorretrato en vitrina), ca. 1925
Rep. pg. 215
Bill Brandt
5.180 Nude (Desnudo), 1950
Rep. pg. 336
Carmen Calvo
Rafael, 1999
Rep. pg. 501
Harry Callahan
Chicago, 1950
Rep. pg. 311
Carlos Cnovas
Burjassot, de la serie Valencia, Valencia, 1997
Rep. pg. 462
Leonardo Cantero
Herradero, 1959
Rep. pg. 358
Robert Capa
Saludo miliciano, despedida de las Brigadas
Internacionales, 1938
Rep. pg. 268
Enrique Carrazoni
Sin ttulo, de la serie Exilio, 1979
Rep. pg. 414
536
NDICE DE ARTISTAS
Toni Catany
A Ghana, al mercat de Kumasi (En Ghana, en el
mercado de Kumasi), 1995
Rep. pg. 506
John Coplans
Self-portrait (Frieze n 2)
(Autorretrato [Friso n 2]), 1994
Rep. pg. 503
Horacio Coppola
Avenida Presidente Roque Senz Pea y Suipacha
(centro), 1936
Rep. pg. 306
Bartolom Mitre y Montevideo, 1936
Rep. pg. 307
Villa Miseria sobre el Riachuelo (sur), 1936
Rep. pg. 308
Gabriel Cuallad
Vieja en la estacin de Atocha, Madrid, 1957
Rep. pg. 348
Teruel, 1937
Rep. pg. 266
Paul Citron
Metropolis, s.f.
Rep. pg. 149
Marjorie Content
Desde Washington Square, Nueva York, ca. 1928
Rep. pg. 247
Koldo Chamorro
Sin ttulo, de la serie Convivir en Valencia, mayo, 1998
Rep. pg. 486
NDICE DE ARTISTAS
537
Juan Dolcet
El Empalao, Valverde de la Vera, 1968
Rep. pg. 372
Frantisek Drtikol
Desnudo con cordn y perla, 1927-29
Rep. pg. 226
Sin ttulo, 1922-35
Rep. pg. 163
Marcel Duchamp
Piston de courant dair (Pistn de corriente de aire), 1914
Rep. pg. 150
Manuel Esclusa
Castells de la Safor IX, del proyecto Gandia i la
Safor: Els paisatges de Joanot Martorell, 1990
Rep. pg. 461
Franco Fontana
Sin ttulo, 1979
Rep. pg. 479
Joan Fontcuberta
Per qu no li dius (Por qu no le dices), 1973
Rep. pg. 411
Els paisatges de Joanot Martorell (Los paisajes de
Joanot Martorell) del proyecto Gandia i la Safor: Els
paisatges de Joanot Martorell, 1990
Rep. pgs. 424-25
Robert Frank
Mississippi Bridge at St. Louis (Puente del
Mississippi en San Luis), 1947-48
Rep. pgs. 380-81
Valencia, 1951
Rep. pg. 387
Walker Evans
Jaroslav Fabinger
Retrato, 1930
Rep. pg. 228
Jos Esquirol
Puerto de Pescadores en La Escala, Gerona, ca. 1900
Pere Formiguera
Mare (Madre), 1991-2000
Rep. pgs. 518-19
538
NDICE DE ARTISTAS
Wilhelm Freddie
Sin ttulo, 1938
Rep. pg. 182
Lee Friedlander
New York City, 1974
Rep. pg. 412
Hamish Fulton
Comb fell, 1976
Rep. pg. 422
Jaromr Funke
Carpeta Reconstructing the Original: Czech
Abstractions 1922-1935 (Reconstruccin del original:
Abstracciones checas, 1922-1935), editada por J.
Andel, impresin de Gary Schneider, AV Editions,
Nueva York en 1994. Edicin 2/9
Sin ttulo (Espiral)
Rep. pg. 154
Carpeta Reconstructing the Original: Czech
Abstractions 1922-1935 (Reconstruccin del original:
Abstracciones checas, 1922-1935), editada por J.
Andel, impresin de Gary Schneider, AV Editions,
Nueva York en 1994. Edicin 2/9
Composicin: cristales
Rep. pg. 155
Chimenea, figura y railes, s.f.
Rep. pg. 212
Hombre trabajando, s.f.
Rep. pg. 213
Carpeta Reconstructing the Original: Czech
Abstractions 1922-1935 (Reconstruccin del original:
Abstracciones checas, 1922-1935), editada por J.
Andel, impresin de Gary Schneider, AV Editions,
Nueva York en 1994. Edicin 2/9
Sin ttulo, 1923-24
Rep. pg. 153
Die Kreise (Los crculos), 1929
Rep. pg. 188
Jorge Galindo
Sin ttulo, 1994
Rep. pg. 428
Alberto Garca Alix
Elena Mar en estado de buena esperanza, 1988
Rep. pg. 438
Jos Garca Poveda
Desmaya Eso, La Habana, 1993
Rep. pg. 498
Cristina Garca Rodero
Platges de Gandia, del proyecto Gandia i la Safor:
Els paisatges de Joanot Martorell, 1990
Rep. pg. 485
Andr Gelpke
Christine, 1977
Rep. pg. 534
Ralph Gibson
Sin ttulo, de la serie The somnambulist, 1969
Rep. pg. 375
Nan Goldin
Cookie at Tin Pan Alley (Cookie en el Tin Pan
Alley), Nueva York, 1983
Rep. pg. 500
Francisco Gmez
Banco de piedra en el Jardn Botnico, 1956
Rep. pg. 271
Susy Gmez
Sin ttulo, 1995
Rep. pg. 508
Ricardo Gmez-Prez
Arles, 1984. Carpeta Memento. Editada por A.
Mller-Pohle, 1993
Rep. pg. 440
Joaquim Gomis
Marea baixa Mont Saint Michel (Marea baja, Mont
Saint Michel), 1936
Rep. pg. 304
NDICE DE ARTISTAS
539
Julio Gonzlez
Cabeza de la Monserrat, s.f.
Rep. pg. 251
Francisco Goi
Alfonso XIII jugando al golf, 1906
Rep. pg. 92
Jugando al tenis en la Granja, 1906
Rep. pg. 92
El Rey y el Infante Fernando, 1910
Rep. pg. 93
Familia Real, 1911
Rep. pg. 93
Fernando Gordillo
Retrato de una madre, 1963
Rep. pg. 362
John Goto
Regions estrangeres (Regiones extranjeras), de la
serie La Albufera, una visi tangencial, 1985
Rep. pg. 427
Jan Groover
Untitled (Shapes) (Sin ttulo [formas]), 1986
Rep. pg. 451
George Grosz
Keep smiling (Sigue sonriendo), 1932
Rep. pg. 181
Pio Guerendiain
Fuya I, 1982
Rep. pg. 474
Jordi Guillumet
Sin ttulo, 1987
Rep. pg. 446
Ciuco Gutirrez
Sueos de domingo, 1997
Rep. pg. 429
Richard Hamilton
My Marilyn (Mi Marilyn), 1965
Rep. pg. 397
Raoul Hausmann
LActeur (El actor), 1946
Rep. pg. 183
alemana), 1934
Rep. pg. 122
Ruhe herrscht wieder in Barcelona (La tranquilidad
vuelve a reinar en Barcelona), 1934
John Heartfield
Der Dada 3, 1920
Rep. pg. 148
mantequilla!), 1935
Boris Ignatovich
Engines (Motores), 1930
Rep. pg. 175
Francesc Jarque
Calle Caballeros, 1963
Rep. pg. 394
Georges Hugnet
Prise de remords fait detrages rencontres de sable
(Remordimientos hechos de extraos), de la serie La
septime face du d, 1935
Rep. pg. 180
Horst P. Horst
Mainboucher Corset, Pars, 1939
Rep. pg. 338
Cemento, 1931
Rep. pg. 231
Fernando Herriz
Porto, 1978
Plstica, 1931
Rep. pg. 231
540
NDICE DE ARTISTAS
Paul Joostens
Atom (tomo), 1930
Rep. pg. 170
Building (Edificio), 1930
Rep. pg. 170
Gonzalo Juanes
Familia en la fiesta de Todos los Santos, de la serie
Punto final, 1963
Rep. pg. 359
Manolo Laguillo
La Safor, del proyecto Gandia i La Safor: Els
paisatges de Joanot Martorell, 1990
Rep. pg. 478
Jan Kamman
Sin ttulo, 1928
Rep. pg. 129
Andr Kertsz
Ecultura de yunque, 1929
Rep. pg. 250
Distorsin n 41, 1933
Rep. pg. 225
William Klein
Sergio Larrain
Valparaso, 1963
Rep. pg. 355
Valparaso, 1963
Rep. pg. 356
Jean Laurent
Sevilla. Vista general desde Triana, s.f.
Rep. pg. 80
Nicols Lekuona
Jos Leonard
Helmar Lerski
Sin ttulo, de la serie Metamorphosis through light
Valentina Kulagina
Stroim (Estamos construyendo), 1929
Rep. pg. 238
Rafael Levenfeld
NDICE DE ARTISTAS
541
Autorretrato, 1985
Rep. pg. 444
El Lissitzky
Exposicin de prensa en Colonia, 1928
Rep. pg. 193
Cubierta del libro de El Lissitzky Russland. Die
Rekonstruktion der Architectur (Rusia. La
reconstruccin de la arquitectura), 1930
Rep. pg. 127
Cartel Al frente (Producid ms tanques), 1941
Rep. pg. 164
Dal, s.f.
Rep. pg. 219
Lampshade, 1919
Rep. pg. 146
Elevage de Poussiere. Version II (Cultivo de polvo.
Versin II), 1920
Rep. pg. 142
Herbert List
In the morning II (Por la maana II), Atenas, 1936
Rep. pg. 229
Xurxo S. Lobato
Sin ttulo, de la serie Galicia, sitio distinto, 1989-90
Rep. pg. 505
Heinz Loew
Studies of Advertising with Light (Estudios de
publicidad con luz), ca. 1928
Rep. pg. 172
Ramn Masats
Los Sanfermines, Pamplona, 1957
Rep. pg. 357
Gordon Matta-Clark
Underground Paris: Ntre Dame (Pars subterrneo:
Ntre Dame), 1977
Rep. pg. 420
Xavier Miserachs
La bvila de Llinars (Horno de Linares), 1952
Rep. pg. 370
Richard Misrach
Serie Louisiana, 1979
Rep. pg. 483
Robert Mapplethorpe
Lisa Lyon, 1982
Rep. pg. 439
Julio Mitchel
Sin ttulo, Coney Island, Nueva York, de la serie T
me amas?, ca. 1965
Rep. pg. 415
Chema Madoz
Paleta, 1994
Rep. pg. 453
542
Lisette Model
Nicks Night Club, 1944
Rep. pg. 365
NDICE DE ARTISTAS
Lszl Moholy-Nagy
Sin ttulo, 1925
Rep. pg. 190
Sport Macht Appetit (El deporte abre el apetito), 1927
Rep. pg. 192
Andreas Mller-Pohle
Sin ttulo, de la serie LAlbufera, visi tangencial, 1985
Rep. pg. 459
Rafael Navarro
Dptico n 23, 1979
Rep. pg. 416
Paulo Nozolino
El Perell, de la serie LAlbufera, visi tangencial, 1985
Rep. pg. 491
Nicols Mller
Carpeta Recuerdo a Marruecos, 1992
Rep. pg. 364
NDICE DE ARTISTAS
Cas Oorthuys
Sin ttulo, 1932
Rep. pg. 173
Benito Monfort
Eugenio Piot, 1851
Rep. pg. 106
Xavier Moll
La Casa de la Caridad, Valencia, 1998
Rep. pg. 530
Toms Montserrat
Sin ttulo, 1900-25
Rep. pg. 108
543
Joaqun Pl i Janini
Les Parques, s.f.
Rep. pg. 107
Bernard Plossu
Paris, 1970
Rep. pg. 417
Luis Poirot
Aaron Siskind, fotgrafo, 1978
Rep. pg. 520
Sigmar Polke
Polkes Peitsche (El ltigo de Polke), 1968
Rep. pg. 395
Leopoldo Pomes
Elsa, 1962
Rep. pg. 336
Richard Prince
Four women with their backs to the camera (Cuatro
mujeres de espaldas a la cmara), 1980
Rep. pg. 509
Arnulf Rainer
Kopfputz (Autorretrato), 1970-74
Rep. pg. 447
Robert Rauschenberg
Photem Series I (28), 1981
Rep. pg. 419
Josep Renau
El hombre rtico, 1929
Rep. pg. 135
Industria de guerra, 1936
Rep. pg. 165
El comisario, nervio de nuestro ejrcito popular, 1936
Rep. pg. 169
Sin ttulo, 1939
Rep. pg. 134
Stalingrado, 1942
Rep. pg. 168
Feliz Ao, 1943
Rep. pg. 167
No... let him play! (No...Dejadle jugar!), 1946
Rep. pg. 167
ONU, 1949
Rep. pg. 166
Homenaje a John Heartfield, 1954 (2 piezas)
Rep. pg. 406
Subvencin al infierno, 1955
Rep. pg. 166
AWL 68. Photogenic Melancholy (Melancola
fotognica), 1955
Rep. pg. 400
Beautiful, 1967
Rep. pg. 433
Radioescucha, 1932
Rep. pg. 240
Radioescucha, 1932
Rep. pg. 241
Jorge Ribalta
Sin ttulo (n 291-2), 1994
Rep. pg. 521
Brbara, 1935
Rep. pg. 241
Marc Riboud
Beijin antic shop (Tienda en Pekn), 1965
Rep. pg. 360
Gerhard Richter
Kanarische landschaften (Campos canarios), 1971
Rep. pg. 468
Hans Richter
Horse Race Symphony (Sinfona de una carrera de
caballos), 1929
Rep. pg. 131
Humberto Rivas
Merc, 1986
Rep. pg. 516
Alexander Rodchenko
Fotomontaje para ilustracin interior del libro Pro
Eto. Ei i mne de Mayakovsky (De esto. Para ella y
para mi), 1923
Rep. pg. 133
544
NDICE DE ARTISTAS
Manolo Rodrguez
Retratos de la buena gente, Valencia, 1998
Rep. pg. 523
Franz Roh
Sin ttulo, ca. 1928
Rep. pg. 227
Walter Rosenblum
Camp for Mutilated Spaniards. Spanish Refugees
(Campamento para mutilados espaoles. Refugiados
espaoles), Toulouse, Francia, 1946
Rep. pg. 270
Jaroslav Rssler
Carpeta Reconstructing the Original: Czech
Abstractions 1922-1935 (Reconstruccin del original:
Antonio Saura
Mditation du Magma 2 (Meditacin del
Magma 2), 1961
Rep. pg. 396
Philipp Scholz-Rittermann
Caminos de luz, Geluhauren, Alemania, 1987
Rep. pg. 473
Jorge Rueda
Lolafile, 1973
Rep. pg. 410
Thomas Ruff
Portrait, Man (Retrato de hombre), 1988
Rep. pg. 507
Philippe Salan
La vie de chteau (La vida en el castillo), 1972
Rep. pg. 489
Gervasio Snchez
Nios jugando en Sarajevo, 1992-94
Rep. pg. 532
August Sander
Pharmacist (Farmacutico), Linz, 1931
Rep. pg. 216
Alberto Schommer
Apocalipsis, de la serie Civilizaciones, 1987
Rep. pg 457
Paul Schuitema
SVG OPF (Positivo), 1928
Rep. pg 210
SVG OPF (Negativo), 1928
Rep. pg 210
Cartel para Centrale Bond Transport-Arbeiders, 1930
Rep. pg 177
Ursula Schulz-Dornburg
Lugares de trnsito, Ashtarak - Alagyaz.
Armenia, 1997-2001
Rep. pg 493
Marta Sents
Amisa y Joseph frente a La Lonja, Valencia, 1998
Rep. pg 504
Cindy Sherman
Untitled n 91 (Sin ttulo, n 91), 1981
Rep. pg. 443
Anton Stankowski
Cannons (Caones), 1927
Rep. pg. 114
Eye composition (Composicin de ojos), 1927
Rep. pg. 115
Swing (Columpio), 1937
Rep. pg. 112
Winterwetter (Tiempo invernal), 1937
Rep. pg. 113
Ralph Steiner
Gypsy Rose Lee and her Girls (La gitana Rose Lee y
sus chicas), 1950-51
Rep. pg. 275
Nehi-Daingneault, 1929-79
Rep. pg. 274
Kte Steinitz
El diseador, ca. 1920
Rep. pg. 214
Grete Stern
Buenos Aires, 1937
Rep. pg. 310
Aaron Siskind
Sin ttulo, 1948
Rep. pg. 272
Eugene Smith
The Spinner (La hiladora), 1951
Rep. pg. 344
Robert Smithson
King Kong meets the Gem of Egypt (King Kong se
encuentra con la Gema de Egipto), 1972
Rep. pg. 418
NDICE DE ARTISTAS
545
Alfred Stieglitz
The Steerage (El entrepuente), 1907
Rep. pg 100
Equivalent (cloud study) (Equivalente [estudio de
nube]), ca. 1927
Rep. pg 208
Paul Strand
Near Saltillo (Cerca de Saltillo), de la serie Photographs
of Mexico (Fotografas de Mxico), 1932
Rep. pg 293
Young Woman and Boy (Muchacha y chico) Toluca,
de la serie Photographs of Mexico (Fotografas de
Mxico), 1933
Rep. pg 280
Boy (Muchacho), Uruapan, de la serie Photographs of
Mexico (Fotografas de Mxico), 1933
Rep. pg 281
Boy (Muchacho), Hidalgo, de la serie Photographs of
Mexico (Fotografas de Mxico), 1933
Rep. pg 281
Thomas Struth
Calle de Montello, Castello, Venecia, 1990
Rep. pg. 477
546
NDICE DE ARTISTAS
Jindrich Styrsky
Sin ttulo (Fotomontaje n 11 de la edicin de lujo de
Emilie Comes to Me in a Dream), 1933
Rep. pg. 303
Sin ttulo, 1935
Rep. pg. 302
Kommode Glocke, ca. 1940
Rep. pg. 302
Hiroshi Sugimoto
SUG 939 Villa Savoye. Le Corbusier, 1998
Rep. pg. 460
Frantisek Tborsky
Reflector, 1933
Rep. pg. 162
Granos de caf, 1934
Rep. pg. 162
Ricard Terr
Oporto, 1956
Rep. pg. 361
Stefan Themerson
Carpeta Photo Images with and without camera
(Foto-imgenes con y sin cmara). Publicado por
Editions Ottezec, Londres, 1983
Imagen 1 Photogram (Fotograma), Konstancin,
Polonia, 1928
Rep. pg. 196
Imagen 2 Photogram (Fotograma), 1928
Rep. pg. 197
Javier Vallhonrat
Ouka Lele, 1983
Rep. pg. 517
Gerardo Vielba
Retrato en Tertre, Pars, 1962
Rep. pg. 369
Manuel Vilario
Sula Bussana, 1985
Rep. pg. 455
Eugen Wiskovsky
Naturaleza muerta, 1929
Rep. pg. 159
Aislante, 1933
Rep. pg. 160
Aislante II, 1935
Rep. pg. 161
Ramn Zabalza
Mocejn, Toledo, 1986
Rep. pg. 492
George S. Zimbel
Hoods up (Caps levantados), Nueva York, 1954
Rep. pg. 366
Daro Villalba
Mstico, 1974
Rep. pg. 421
Ian Wallace
La piscina Valencia II, 1990
Rep. pg. 467
Vaclav Zraly
Sin ttulo (Arquitecto), 1920
Rep. pg. 195
Estudio para fachada, 1928
Rep. pg. 194
Proyecto arquitectnico, 1931-32
Rep. pg. 194
Wim Wenders
The road to Emmaus, near Jerusalem (El camino a
Emas, cerca de Jerusaln), 2000
Rep. pgs. 464-65
Edward Weston
Tina Modotti. Nude on the Azotea (Tina Modotti.
Desnudo en la azotea), 1923
Rep. pg. 184
Chambered Nautilus (Caracola), 1927
Rep. pg. 185
NDICE DE ARTISTAS
547
Piet Zwart
Maschinenteile (Piezas de mquina), 1930
Rep. pg. 174
Sin ttulo. Cartel para telegramas de felicitacin con
menbretes de G. Reuter, J. Jongent, J. Sluyters y F.
Mees, 1931
Rep. pg. 176
ENGLISH TRANSLATION
FOREWORD
FOREWORD
MIL VILLELA
President of Generalitat
The IVAM has always been directly involved with its time, intensely sharing the
experience with contemporary citizens, while safeguarding its freedom, its plurality,
its dynamic and innovative mission, and, above and beyond anything else, its
reflective and critical spirit, succeeding in its goal to make society as a whole more
aware of the role of culture in our collective self-esteem.
from its collection at the IVAM in the exhibition Disidentity: Contemporary Brazilian
Art from MAM SP.
Although organized for visitors here, the exhibition Photography in the IVAM
Collection sensitizes us to the production of photography universalized by art history.
In fact, the Photography Collection of the IVAM has enormous specific weight
within the collection as a whole. And that is the reason why it was decided that the
images now being presented would open this new phase in the dissemination of this
art, so representative of our time.
This exhibition, The Photography Collection of the IVAM provides a broad clarifying
overview through a wide range of noteworthy works of art, with the aim of bringing
this expressive and suggestive legacy closer to all citizens of Brazil. It also offers the
possibility of an ongoing dialogue between the public and the contents of the
exhibited works.
Getting to know foreign museums or, more accessibly, visiting the websites of
The IVAM was Spains first museum to collect photography. Now that we have
overcome the controversy around the medium, when it was initially denied a place
among the arts, photography currently occupies a central position within the visual
universe.
The collection of photography from the IVAM which is coming to the Museu de
organizations such as the IVAM and other cultural institutions has undoubtedly now
become a stimulating and refreshing way of broadening cultural awareness of what
is happening beyond our frontiers. Even so, seeing photographs like these at close
quarters constitutes a very special occasion.
In tune with that new reality, the transition from the culture of text to the culture of
image goes hand in hand with the transition from the industrial society to the postindustrial society, a mutation that can be recognised and observed with special clarity
in photography.
discoveries.
We are very pleased, therefore, to have this exhibition, the first international show
in the MAMs programme for 2007, with the presence of works which direct our
gaze, taste and perception towards photography, both iconographic and artistic, in
either case open to intense interpretations. The range of visual material is wideranging and varied, and the IVAM deserves recognition of the work which
synchronizes freedom, plurality, dynamism and innovation in the formation of its
photography collection.
ENGLISH TRANSLATION
551
used the camera obscura to study eclipses of the sun. Using this procedure in the 16th
century, Leonardo da Vinci realised that the images received inside the room were
smaller and were inverted, although they maintained both form and colour.
From the very beginning, this absolute fidelity in the reproduction of the real world
forced artists to change their patterns of behaviour. There was no longer any merit
in making portraits truthfully reproducing the commissioner, because photography
already did that. It was therefore necessary to add something else. We can recognise
in this new instrument the point of inflection for the appearance of new painterly
techniques initially configured around the Impressionist movement.
But it was to be with the historical avant-gardes when photography vouchsafed its
consideration as a genre, with its own specific weight within the arts. It was then
when it shifted from being regarded as a mere instrument abetting the work of
artists and gained the consideration of a work of art in its own right.
The discovery may be compared to the inventions of the printing press, cinema or,
more recently Internet. And not only by dint of the aesthetic and ethical changes it
has brought about in the arts, but also because it has become an essential medium to
grasp contemporary reality. Hence, since its inception, photography has been an
instrument for the critical and aesthetic capturing, and sometimes manipulation, of
everyday reality.
In 1890, Stieglitz returned to the United States and took a series of simple
photographs of New York in different moments of the year and weather conditions.
In 1902 he founded the Photo-Secession movement which would champion
photography as an independent art form. Gertrude Ksebier, Edward Steichen and
Clarence H. White, were, among others, members of the group, and Camera Work
was their official magazine. In its last issues, the magazine published works which
represented a breach with traditional subject matters, as well as the recognition of the
aesthetic value of everyday objects. After the group broke up, Stieglitz continued
sponsoring new talents at the 291 Gallery which he owned at 291 Fifth Avenue in
New York. American photographers who exhibited their work at the gallery include
Paul Strand, Edward Weston, Ansel Easton Adams and Imogen Cunningham.
Reasons of this kind turned the last two decades of the 19th century into a golden age
of photography in terms of its acceptance and popularisation among the general
public, whose members could see themselves in portraits and at the same time had
images of their living environments an idea of the city in the measure of bourgeois
tastes was build and other cities at home or abroad, thus giving rise to a sort of
surrogate knowledge of the world.
In the early 20th century, commercial photography grew rapidly. The improvements
in black and white technique opened up the way for those who did not have the time
nor the skills to work with the complex procedures of the previous century. In 1907
the first commercial materials of colour film were put at the service of the general
public: some crystal plates called Autochromes Lumire in honour of their French
inventors, Auguste and Louis Lumire.
The term photography is made up by two Greek words: photo (light) and graphos
(writing). The conflation of the two words gives rise to the idea of writing or drawing with
light. The rest was the result of the confluence of two discoveries that were initially
separate: the obtaining of frozen images through a camera obscura, and their reproduction
through chemical reactions resulting from the effect of light on certain substances.
But it was not until 1822 when the French inventor Joseph N. Niepce (1765-1833)
obtained the first permanent photography. However, some years had still to elapse
before photography would become a truly practical technique.
The following decade saw the perfecting of the photomechanical systems used in
printing shops, a development which generated great demand among photographers
to illustrate texts in newspapers and journals. That demand created a new
commercial field for photography: advertising.
552
ENGLISH TRANSLATION
Somehow, photography is always a report, for it freezes the image captured by the
lens and the human eye. However, in spite of that, there are myriads of ways of
understanding the process, depending on what the aim is. The first researchers
limited themselves to recording what they saw. However, in the 1960s, there was a
split between those who continued using their camera to capture images without any
particular intention, and those who decided that photography was a new form of
visual art. Photography started to combine the use of image as a document and as a
testimony a sub-genre known as social photography.
Photography has always been used to inspire and influence political or social views.
In the 1920s, it was also used to promote and direct consumerism, and, as yet another
element of advertising. Commercial and advertising photography also represented a
huge boost for the graphic industry together with the progress in the techniques of
high quality photographic reproduction. Particularly remarkable in this field were
Irving Penn and Cecil Beaton, photographers of high society; Richard Avedon, who
gained celebrity as a fashion photographer; and Helmut Newton, a controversial
fashion photographer and portraitist, whose works frequently display a high erotic
content.
The Photography Collection of the IVAM presents a particular revision of the History
of Photography, featuring the artists who pioneered technical experimentation,
contributing a decidedly artistic character to their works.
This collection was begun with the same spirit as the museums main collection,
which follows fundamentally historical criteria, aimed at expressing and
underscoring the characteristics of modern and contemporary art, as well as the
specific contributions to its development in Spain and very especially in Valencia,
revolving around the sculptures of Julio Gonzlez, with his use of emptiness and
assemblage of pieces in the sculptural composition.
Nevertheless, photography has never entirely managed to free itself from the
influence of painting. In the 1920s, in Europe, the nonconformist ideas of Dada
found their expression in the works of the Hungarian artist Lszl Moholy-Nagy
and the American Man Ray, who used the technique of manipulation. They worked
in a totally spontaneous manner to obtain their photograms or rayographs, taking
abstract images by arranging the objects on light-sensitive surfaces.
This change in artistic language is the main axis around which we have selected
artists using photography as a form of artistic expression, alongside artists who made
up the historical movements from the decade of the nineteen-thirties, and those that
arose later with Informalism and Pop Art. These movements have received a lot of
attention in the Collection of the IVAM. Photography, photomontage and graphic
design have always been given a central place in the Collection and in the temporary
exhibitions we have organised, situating them in their rightful place in the history of
art. Works which have been made by some of the most emblematic figures in the
artistic avant-garde plus a series of artists deserving greater attention, bestowing the
collection with a different and exclusive character, and which are essential for any
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Like time, the image cannot be captured, but it can be taken out of its moment and
transferred to a different essence of continuity; this makes it all the more necessary
for an expressive discipline like photography to categorically form part of the
numerous variants contemporary arts offers us.
The literality of the image, its rhetoric, its symbolism, can take photographic art to
narrative fields capable of expressing subjective realities, of becoming artistic ideals
comfortably superseding social and cultural forms of everyday life.
With this exhibition we hope to clarify two misunderstandings that have been
associated with the evolution of photography. The first, the false attribution that the
results of this tool are exclusively the fruit of technique and truthfully represent
reality and the second is that, once overcome the first, it seemed that only those
photographs made by artists had any intrinsic value, with their genial manipulations
that would convert them into unique objects, in contradistinction to the infinite
copies that photography could contribute, on the other hand the most important of
its specific characteristics and one which began a new technological revolution, as a
democratising image of society.
All experiences are permeated with language, in such a way that it is virtually
impossible to gain access to reality that is not linguistically filtered. If we understand
photography in its symbolic-linguistic dimension, as a value synthesised by its
creators and as a liberating and transforming icon for spectators, it should be
contemplated from the perspective of ongoing feedback.
Mario Benedetti said that through the ages and the techniques, image has been
introduced into poetry. And that happened also when it was drawing, design,
painting or mere abstraction. And also when it is photography. As Diane Arbus
proclaimed photography is a secret about a secret, and therefore we could add that
it is a revelation about a revelation.
But it would be from Robert Frank and Gabriel Cuallad onwards when
photographs began to fit in to perfection with the conception of the collection of the
IVAM, finding a wide representation of works by a series of artists who use this tool
for writing with light, and coincide fully with the conceptual goal of the collection.
Also in complete consonance with the driving force of the Collection is a major
selection of photomontages which begin with the whole series John Heartfield did
for the magazine AIZ, in the period of classical avant-garde, recovering the
magazines from the era as the true originals, because that was how their authors had
initially conceived them, being as they were against the figure of the artist and
aiming their art with its strong revolutionary component mainly at the general
public. This part of the collection is further complemented by an important group of
works left by the photomontage artist from Valencia Josep Renau, who added the
inclusion of colour in political photomontage, tying in directly with the idea of
montage and the appropriation of images of the pop artists who appeared in the
sixties, at a moment when non-figurative art entered in crisis and the relationship
between art and society was totally ambiguous, with more or less subtle positions
coexisting in both directions.
Ultimately, this collection wants to lead society through the swampy terrain where
the languages of art are expressed in order to make them more central in everyday
life in such a way that their immanent social functions can nourish citizens in a more
involved and reflective way in tune with the times we are living in.
A series of keys are extracted from the everyday image that tell us more about our
relationship with things and tells us a lot about what we understand as reality, a
theme that interests me. The main surprise we find when reading On Photography by
S. Sontag and El beso de Judas. Fotografa y verdad by J. Fontcuberta is the leap they
both make to the field of ontology, through which photography must be understood
both as ontology and as an aesthetic.
Overlooking the individual techniques used, we can see in this exhibition the
possibilities that photomontage offered in all directions. From the early use by the
first photographers who tried to simulate a realist action to the various
experimentations dating from the era of the historic avant-gardes, reinforcing the
huge communicative potential of photomontage. From the 1920s onwards, cubist
collage and photomontage maintained a special influence on constructivists and
Dadaists, when it was used by the latter as an instrument for critical political and
social action by dint of the visual impact and strength coming from this singular free
relation of fragments of reality. These ideas evolved together with the use of
photography, new typographies and the new processes of graphic reproduction,
which added much more precision to the language of photomontage and allowed for
a mass diffusion, ensuring its continuity in the work of artists from later generations,
who are also included in this collection.
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and strange world, because it allows us to establish a different relationship with it,
eschewing the demands of the self. Yet between the defence of photography as a better
means of expression of the self and the praise of photography as a better means of
putting the self at the service of reality there is not such a great deal of difference as we
might first believe. Both presuppose that photography provides a unique system of
stripping bare, or in other words, it shows us reality as we had not seen it before.
we cannot overlook the weight of inter-iconic free spaces or the deliberate absence of
the same. We can discover a context arising, in the society that produces this image,
from certain cultural qualities inaccessible to language.
Although we can also find a level on which the protagonist is the absence of context.
It is photography that denies the context to its extremes, that deliberately eliminates
the references in order to force us towards a contemplation in freedom. The image
that becomes abstraction, foreclosing rational processes, and which is tensed between
the attraction of the inexplicable and the force of the real, inherent in the very nature
of photography.
No instrument except the camera is able to register these complex and ephemeral
reactions and express all the majesty of the moment. No hand can express it, because
the mind cannot retain the exact truth of a moment long enough to allow its slow
fingers to capture the vast mass of details. The impressionists did their best to do so,
but in vain. Then, consciously or unconsciously, what they wanted to demonstrate
with their effects of light was the truth of the moment; the impressionists always
tried to capture the magic of the here and now.
The photographer does no more than reflect through his work his personal way of
seeing and feeling the world that surrounds him, and this is because, at the end of the
day, we photograph according to how we live our lives. A work which, on the other
hand, has an extremely high symbolic character given that, as we have said before,
the meaning of the image and what it shows us does not necessarily have to be one
and the same.
But the momentary effects of light escaped them while they were analysing them;
and their impressions in general were no more than a series of overlayered
impressions. Stieglitz was wiser. He directly used the instrument made for the job.
Photographic images seduce us, some more than others. It is extremely difficult to
ignore one when it enters into our field of vision, but the contact time that we
dedicate to it depends on too many variables to try and list them all here. To a large
extent, this time of contemplation is created in the photographs themselves: in their
ability to suggest, in their wealth, and in the conditions under which the encounter
with it is produced.
Moving on now to the field of documentary photography, I would like to deal briefly
with the function of the photographic context. A while ago the prestigious brand
Leica launched an advertising campaign in which we could see the hands of several
famous photographers holding the said camera. In the advertisement in which
Sebastio Salgado has the camera we read the following words: For me,
documentary photography is all about human dignity . Knowing the work of this
prolific and brilliant photographer, it is easy for one to understand his claim. If his
photographs deal with human dignity, it is not only because this is his intention every
time that he focuses his camera, but also because his images have been especially
channelled to precisely strengthen this goal: books by Non Governmental
Organisations, exhibitions whose benefits are donated for development projects,
publications aimed at cooperation with the Third World, ceding his photographs to
organisations denouncing injustice and helping to eradicate social inequality, etc.
And this brings us to the importance of the context.
The context or, to be more precise, the contexts that determine our contemplation of
a photographic image embrace many difference references. Above and beyond what
determines our interiority with its subjective connotations, the context is always
present, established by everything that surrounds it, including the lighting and the
colour of the wall on which it hangs, and even the other photographs that might be
included in an exhibition or a publication and that can strongly interact with it, and
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ups and downs of humanity over recent centuries, then photography, whether in the
press, or professional or even amateur photography, represents, together with cinema
and television the visual memory of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and is a
basic means of representation and communication. For this reason, from the
perspective of Information and Documentation Science we must accept
responsibility in the conservation and management of a useful and informative
documentary heritage which, for many different reasons, is not always well treated.
The Britannica dictionary defines photography as the art or process of producing
images on a sensitised surface (as a film) by the action of radiant energy and especially
light and defines image as the optical counterpart of an object produced by an
optical device; a tangible or visible representation; a likeness of an object produced
on a photographic material. Either way, the truth is that by means of photography
something or somebody located at a given moment in time in front of the camera lens
is registered on a support that will allow it to be popularised, collected or exhibited.
and transparent testimony of the event and photography produces an impression of the
representation of reality, and is always an obligatory allusion to it.
That is to say, we can claim that photography makes a couple with the text and both
complement each other. Photojournalism has been given the role of informing in its
own vernacular about the socio-political and economic events of society and given
that it is a non-verbal means of communication it has an enormous credibility among
the general public, because it captures the moment of the event.
Nonetheless, all the work done by the graphic reporter in creating and demonstrating
a fragment of time and space to inform about a news item, in the vast majority of
cases is distorted by the editor, with the connotative use of captions that incite the
reader to accept a reading now decoded by the cuts or framings imposed by the
editorial board or due to needs of space.
Therefore texts and photos are two codes used together as a means of
communication. The language of the text, as a manifestation of thought, can be
explicit or subtle, safeguarding other suggestions for the space between the lines.
Taking this idea further, we can see how photography is no longer a true copy of
reality, it is not just a reproduction of something that exists or has existed.
Photography is an iconic representation much more codified that we normally
admit. And although many terms were coined before in turn becoming stereotypes
that define it as a crystallization of the visual moment, the certificate of presence
or non-mediatised reproduction, the truth is that photography is far from reality
in these cases or, even, from the human perception of reality. First of all, photography
eliminates all information (sound, touch, taste, smell) that cannot be reproduced by
optical means. Besides, it reduces the characteristic three-dimensionality of the real
world to the two-dimensionality of the flat plane, framed by the picture, chosen by
the photographer, as the impassable limit and with a notable alteration in the scale of
representation. Photography, except through the use of the conventional resources of
visual language, does not reproduces motion, and what is more, it puts time on hold
and, furthermore, eliminates or alters colour. Which is to say, we believe that
photography is a document made up by the combination of a support and
information transmitting a coded message that demands a decoding response from
the beholder. For all of the above reasons, we must insist that when we analyse
photographs we are not analysing reality but a representation of reality, while it is
also true that it is a representation that we see as being faithful despite all the coding.
With photography one can obtain the reproduction of visual images by optical and
physical-chemical means, which can be made credible as neutral or high fidelity.
If words serve the purpose of argumentation, photography can bring with it the
capacity to evaluate the degree of veracity in the argumentation or configure itself as
the very expression of truth.
Just as a painting can transmit the idea of the artist who has created it, photography
can transmit the mind of the photojournalist and the vision he has of the world he is
photographing, with the visible image standing in as the conjunction of reality
framed by the camera lens and a reflection of something invisible, which is the mind
of the graphic reporter. These are concepts made clear in the images of Robert Capa,
David Seymour Chim and Agust Centelles, represented in the collection.
In photojournalism, images of suffering, of death, of the violation of human
integrity, although they have been incorporated into our everyday lives, provide
material for establishing immediate and intense communication with the public.
This is a delicate issue, where there is room for an ethical discussion on the
appropriateness or not of exhibiting certain types of image, as well as a questioning
with respect to the spectators stance to them.
Photography has a double purpose... it is the child of an apparent world, of the experienced
moment, and as such it always has something of the historical or scientific document about
it; furthermore, it is also a child of the rectangle, a product of the fine arts, which demands
a pleasant and harmonious filling in of space with signs in black and white or in colour.
In this regard, photography always maintains one foot in the field of the graphic arts and
it will never be able to escape this fact.
In the case of photojournalism, the press photo, more so than the written text, has a huge
potential for objectivity as long as it obeys the deontological codes of the professional and
as long as the subjective does not make its way into the photographic emission. If
written information can omit or deform the truth of a fact, the photo appears as faithful
Associated with this area where photography coexists side by side with journalistic
information, there are other facets of the same nature, which are equally involved,
like photomontage and digital photography.
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And in this new context it is worth asking ourselves, what are the limits of the distortion of
the published image by the technological means of production? Among many other instances
of manipulation, we can exemplify the most famous and celebrated cases: photographic
manipulation prior to computers like in photo-Stalinism from 1924 to 1937 when Stalin
not only executed his political enemies but also wanted to erase their faces from existing
images, using photographic tricks and cuts and cropping with scissors, or erasing with dyes,
making all sorts of photomontages, to glorify his own figure and overshadow all others.
For over thirty years David King, a former art editor at the Sunday Times, compiled
all the manipulated photographs published during Stalins regime and brought them
all together in the book The Commissar Vanishes, published by Metropolitan Books,
where he demonstrated the art of falsification and the macabre methods of rewriting
history.
Subsequently, these digital images have an unquestionable value, that goes beyond
their technical or visual values: they continue our progress in the knowledge about
the photographic fact itself. They trigger off reflections on the very nature of
photography.
Stalin not only erased people from photographs, he also erased them from life.
Some periods of time, like this end of century, seem to induce predictions and
prophecies on the fate of photography. Nonetheless, there are several major
reflections on photography and the future, looking at the relationship between a
whole succession of aesthetic and technical inventions, bearers of ideologies that
operate in different ways in each different historical-cultural context.
In this sense, we must say that new technologies have proven useful in radically
overturning the aesthetics of the latest decade. Digital technology strips photography
from its legacy of truth, definitively breaking with the existential connection with its
referent, which was up to now indissoluble. The new synthetic images seem to have
focused above all on the notion of the loss of the real, for reality itself has started to
be replaced by the world of digital simulation.
Since its origins, photomontage has also run in parallel to the history of photography with
the purpose of decontextualising various fragments of reality from their initial source in
order to come up with a new invented reality. If photographic reality is intentionally
distorted through photomontage to convey a clear visual message, we should not be
surprised to see that this is now openly done with the new digital procedures.
Photography also involves the exhibition of the photographed object. And in todays
society, where individualism calls the shots, people hide increasingly behind PC
screens, in worlds segregated by barriers against the flashes that used to immortalise
community gatherings.
We could say that 21st century photography is in the hands of anyone who owns a
camera. The action of freezing a moment, of playing with it, pushing a button
immediately reproducing what happened only a few microseconds before, is
producing a flood of millions of images per second, coming and going in the shape
of bytes through the media, e-mail, mobile telephones or via satellites.
Therefore, the next question would be: Are we not then witnessing, in the new
technological media, a similar process, a kind of digital polygraphy allowing us to
combine several traditional disciplines and the beginning of the blurring of the
boundaries dividing them?
No matter how digital or manipulated it may be, photography stills requires an optical
process, which is what legitimises it as a recording of the real. Perhaps the grain of metal
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silver is no longer what makes up that photosensitive image, but unquestionably, the
genesis of that digital information with a mouse or an optical pen bears no resemblance
at all with the graphic and manual process of generation of images.
In classic photomontage, the vision of the seams in the final image (the blatant
cutting with scissors) did not matter at all; neither did the lack of visual integration
among the various elements making up the image. Everything was justified by the
meaning the image assumed as a narrative built with a specific purpose in mind. The
falsification was evident. There was no intention of deceiving anyone, and the stress
was voluntarily put on the constructed nature of the image.
Nevertheless, the latest generation of virtual worlds open up a whole new range of
possibilities that only a few years ago were not even dreamt of. Digital photography
could nearly always work as a technologically more advanced photomontage, which
now does attempt to engage in a systematic concealment of the stitched between the
various selected and fused images. There are no longer blatant scissors cuts. Now we
have images blending smoothly together, insistently hiding the process of
manipulation. That allows for this entirely computer-reconstructed digital world to
seem disturbingly real, notwithstanding that second virtual genesis.
Each one of the elements in the process adds something to the main characteristics of
photography: the time frame of the moment of capture, the formation of the image
through light emanating from the scene, the perspective of the camera obscura
together with alterations introduced by the lens, the two-dimensionality of the
support and the characteristics which this adds to the final image: material, texture,
etc. These are basic elements in the structure of the photographic that define its
specific characteristics as a medium and differentiate it from other media with which
it shares certain features or interests.
On this question, some authors have proposed the need for a revision of the very nature
of photography, in the light of the new digital systems. Similarly, the coexistence of
photography with other images of a different origin coming from the digital medium
requires an arrangement of the different categories of the digital image.
Another vision of urban areas and nature widely understood from the environment
to the human being, that is to say, understood as an ecosystem, is also well reflected
in the collection of the IVAM by prestigious artists both from Spain and worldwide.
From John Heartfield to Joan Fontcuberta or from Jean-Eugne Atget to Gabriele
Basilico. Manipulated reality of a direct gaze on it.
The alteration of the support which registers the photographic image does not
fundamentally alter the process, it does not annul its condition as a photographic
system (though it can alter the appearance of the images) and it takes us to one or
other of the possible cases of photography, just as the pencil, fountain or ballpoint
pens do not mean that an image is no longer a drawing. These are specific processes,
all of which are within the legitimate field of the photographic.
If we consider the history of art, with all its complexity, as one of the best indicators
to analyse the trajectory of the aesthetic interests of humankind (as published in the
19th century by Alexander von Humboldt, who underscored the interest, from a
geographical viewpoint, of images of nature and landscape provided by literature
and painting), we will notice that until the Romantic movement which began in the
eighteenth century landscape did not figure as a theme for compositions, neither in
painting nor in literature or other artistic disciplines. To put it another way, we could
state that the human being in so far as a social being, has lived with his back turned
towards landscape the more he has physically approached it. Photography accepts
this shortcoming and tries to put an end to it by rendering the nature of things.
To conclude this analysis we ought to mention that photography, and its position in
history, touches many of the cornerstones of our modern culture, adding decisive
elements in the modification of the meaning of traditional concepts such as vision,
comprehension, knowledge (science) and imitation, representation, realism (art),
with the perspective as the midpoint between art and science.
The socio-cultural importance of photography and the dominion of materials in
photography are largely dependant on a working knowledge of these questions. For
that reason, these brief reflections, the knowledge of certain aspects of tradition, both
in the field of sciences as much as in the arts, that might be related with photography,
are fields of obligatory knowledge and, as a consequence, are absolutely necessary if
we want to understand the art of today.
Both through their old and new buildings, towns and cities are a stimulus for the creation
of singular photographic images. Forms and lines of urban architecture make up, in
themselves, interesting images. The straight lines of modern architecture compose many
geometrical forms which can be contrasted with buildings from another period.
In urban photography, the natural as the artificial or order or chaos, are habitual
subject matters. In the evening light and combined with shop windows, car
headlights, and neon signs the feeling of the typical urban frenzy is accentuated.
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highly sophisticated and relatively low cost equipment that are way above the
most adventurous speculations that Fox-Talbot or Niepce could have guessed at.
As Gubern claimed photographys prestige as documentary and its magical
dimension, based on the extreme faithfulness to the photographed object, are rooted
in its essential realism.
John Szarkowski began this process with The Photographers Eye (New York, Museum
of Modern Art, 1966), followed by the even more influential Looking at Photographs
(New York, Museum of Modern Art, 1973). His well-deliberated intention was to
establish criteria to analyse and see photographic images in conjunction with other
images within the field of visual art and communication, and this example was soon
followed in the USA by Susan Sontag, in France by Roland Barthes and in Great
Britain by John Berger and Victor Burgin, among other influential critics and
interpreters. The aesthetic, political and theoretical perspectives represented by these
thinkers had a multi-faceted approach, yet they possessed a shared element: the
conviction that photography, as a medium, is unique but needs to be seen in relation
to other forms of artistic expression.
Back in 1859 Charles Baudelaire, in his critique of photography as a substitute for the
work of art, underscored the documentary role of photography when he said that it
must, therefore, return to its true duty, which is that of handmaid of the arts and
sciences (...) Let photography quickly enrich the travellers album, and restore to his eyes
the precision his memory may lack; let it adorn the library of the naturalist, magnify
microscopic insects, even strengthen, with a few facts, the hypotheses of the astronomer;
let it, in short, be the secretary and record-keeper of whomsoever needs absolute
material accuracy for professional reasons (...) Let it save crumbling ruins from oblivion,
books, engravings, and manuscripts, the prey of time, all those precious things, vowed
to dissolution, which crave a place in the archives of our memories...
Aesthetically. The image wants to please the beholder, to provide him with specific
sensations. While it is true that photography partakes in all these three ways of
relating with the world and, although the epistemic way may seem the most
accessible to the classical documentary process, the truth is that the symbolic and the
aesthetic dimensions should not be overlooked given that many photographs change
their way of relation for different reasons. In the end, after one hundred and fifty
years of existence, photography is still evolving.
To put this idea of realism in the most straightforward way possible: photography
seems to bear a very close likeness with the everyday perception of the world, thus
removing it from forms like painting, drawing and sculpture. We are able to
recognise the subject of a photographic image, without taking into account the
coded distortions they might contain, for instance, the absence of colour, a peculiar
viewpoint, an exaggeration of specific elements due to the presence or absence of
light and the inevitable selective nature of the viewer even when not using the
camera obscura.
The images of time captured in the collection of the IVAM, their literalness, their
rhetoric and their symbolism all permeate photographic art, and it is in this way that,
under the premises expounded here in narrative fields, they express realities transformed
into artistic ideals that step beyond the socio-cultural forms of everyday life.
All images whether fixed or moving are now the raw material through which
the majority of advanced cultures can obtain information on themselves and on the
outside world. We all look at photographs and many people take photographs with
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NON-CODED MESSAGES
while listening to a memorable story being told, the handcrafted weave of the word
vanishes. It is worth bearing in mind that the trace of the storyteller is imprinted
on the story like the prints of the potters hand on the clay vase; he usually begins
his story with details on the circumstances of how the story came down to him, or
sometimes he presents it openly as a personal experience. We are not merely
talking about the disappearance of literary genre, if it ever were such a thing, and
more importantly it has changed the face of death, that limit experience on which
it dwelt so obsessively. There is no patience to snatch images from the whirlwind
sometimes called the writing of disaster. Valery nostalgically expressed the
certainty that there used to be patience to act in accordance with nature:
miniatures, ivories, highly elaborate carving, stones cut and polished to perfection,
works in lacquer and painting produced by applying fine translucent layers, works
coming from a time when time did not count. Sophie Calle makes works which are
normally defined as stories. Calles defining feature is in fact explanation, the
morbid pleasure of evidence: what the blind call beautiful must be reproduced,
although it were only for the satisfaction of those who can see. All persecutions
must be documented, what unsettles must be exteriorised, the control of the libido
is absolute, it imposes a rhetoric of events, it is concerned with what Barthes called
the reality effect7 which ultimately transforms life into a simulacrum. To be
more precise Sophie Calle makes short novels. Anyone who listens to a story is
accompanied by the storyteller, but the reader of a novel is alone. We owe Lukcs
a fundamental clarification, when he saw the novel as the fundamental soul of the
stateless, events lack music and lived experience has been substituted for the
pathetic problem of the meaning of life. Sophie Calles narrations affect the
spectator who is kept at a distance, reading the apparent revelation of intimacy. Yet
all these images of people who are invited to sleep, duplicated spying, persecutions,
intrusion of perception, stories of stolen works of art (memory of their aura), tombs
of loved ones, buried by geological action, are authentic exteriority. Mystery,
passion, and instincts are meticulously negated, these highly rhetoricised photos
have been calculated. Sophie Calles basic material is experience, what crops up as
she wanders the streets, the stories are linked when things happen: it is practically
her life itself that the artist puts into play, in an impressive unfolding of hyperreal,
or perhaps we could just say hyperfictional, mechanisms often coupled with the
idea of an improbable album of photos and that might have something more to do
with the self-portrait that with the autobiography: the unfolding of a whole theory
of the construction of the figures of the I8. In point of fact, she builds an identity
which is pure scaffolding, confirming that the concept is the necropolis of intuition,
it forecloses the tragic, that ground or abyss of the word woven in shared
experience. The other, the figure of desire, is also the driving motor of the conflict.
There is a desire to follow the other9. In one photograph Sophie Calle reveals one of
her fantasies (to be a man), holding her husbands penis as he is pissing. Sophie
Calle lets us read her travels through the labyrinth of desire, the need to alter or
falsify an identity in order to make ones way to the exit. We could claim, in
agreement with Benjamin, that proverbs are ruins that stand in for old stories, and,
like ivy, their moral creeps over a gesture. Where the I narrates itself, where the
unconscious works, there is still something left to be done: to project what can
apparently not be seen. He who ignores the fact that he is seen ends up replicating
the condition by which the voyeur deliberately forgets his condition10.
I must, to begin with, insist on the following: in the scopic field, the gaze is outside,
I am looked at, that is to say, I am a picture. This is the function that is found at the
heart of the institution of the subject in the visible. What determines me, at the most
profound level, in the visible, is the gaze that is outside. It is through the gaze that I
enter light and it is from the gaze that I receive its effects. Hence it comes about that
the gaze is the instrument through which light is embodied and through which if
you allow me to use a word, as I often do, in a fragmented form I am photographed1.
Moholy-Nagy claimed that not he who is ignorant of writing but ignorant of
photography will be the illiterate of the future2.
The camera was invented by Fox Talbot in 1839. Within a mere thirty years of its
invention as a gadget for an elite, photography was being used for police filing, war
reporting, military reconnaissance, pornography, encyclopaedic documentation,
family albums, postcards, anthropological records (often, as with the Indians in the
United States, accompanied by genocide), sentimental moralising, inquisitive
probing (the wrongly named candid camera): aesthetic effects, news reporting and
formal portraiture. The first cheap popular camera was put on the market, a little
later in 1888. The speed with which the possible uses of photography were seized
upon is surely an indication of photography s profound, central applicability to
industrial capitalism. Marx came of age the year of the cameras invention3.
Among other motives for symbolic or archetypical transformation, to fall back on
Jungian terms, is the exploration of the shadow4. The photographer is, in many ways,
a master of shadows, he points his camera at a scene and takes the cover off the lens
for a while; it is only later, after developing, when he will see exactly what it is the
camera has seen. And so, this first daguerrotypist has seen and will see the scene that
is being transformed into an image, but during the prolonged moment of its making
he does not see it. He photographs blind, from memory5.
Walter Benjamin, in his essay on Lesskow, characterised the storyteller as someone
who brings news from afar, like the person who returns home with news of the
past in contradistinction to the knowingness of one who has never moved away.
Yet, it is experience itself that tells us that the art of storytelling is reaching its end6,
as if it were now impossible to exchange experiences, to sit down and listen
attentively. Might it be that there are no longer people capable of giving advice, in
other words, to transmit the wisdom interwoven in the materials of life. The story
is nearing its end because the epic aspect of the truth is in decline. Each story calls
for a sequel, demands that the listener remembers what he has been told. The more
the listener forgets himself, the deeper the story will go in his memory. In this age
when, according to the author of One-Way Street, one no longer spins or weaves
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shared humanity. Very often it is also one of irreducible strangeness! Since its
beginnings, photography has heightened the expectations and the anxiety associated
with the idea of the double21.
Some photos resist any kind of commentary, for instance Garden Tools and a Straw
Hat (1843 or 1844) by Hippolyte Bayard. The absence of the artist could be marked
by the hat that otherwise bestows a strange sense of harmony on the image, with the
empty and upturned flowerpots. This wonderful photographer also takes his selfportrait surrounded by statues (in a work from 1845-1848): a vulnerable, theatrical,
subject among objects11. He poses like an object (corpse, sculpture, picture, still life)
to be converted into a subject of recognition.
We know full well that photos inevitably impose a set of rules on the models,
adjusting the body of the other to a socio-symbolic system. Posing is adopting a
posture that one supposes is not natural, arranging oneself in a somewhat theatrical
fashion, even sometimes in a clearly uncomfortable position, to become presentable,
simulating a sensed form of naturalness, a call for respect22. In the moment of the
meeting of the real thing and the eye a form of immobility is produced, the pose is
frozen, the tensed posture that will later surprise us or, in other words, what makes
it impossible for us to recognise ourselves. As Barthes claimed Photography
transformed subject into object, and even, one might say, into a museum object: in
order to take the first portraits (around 1840) the subject had to assume long poses
under a glass roof in bright sunlight; to become an object made one suffer as much
as a surgical operation; then a device was invented, a kind of prosthesis invisible to
the lens, which supported and maintained the body in its passage to immobility: this
headrest was the pedestal of the statue I would become, the corset of my imaginary
essence23. It might be true that posing is to strike a relationship with the phallus,
though, paradoxically, the feeling of being entranced comes from the presence of
the mother. Photographs literally leave us petrified, as if we had returned to that
classical horror in front of the Gorgon24, transforming the subject into object. While
primitive peoples felt a profound fear of the photographic camera, this strange device
that might rob them of their being25, modern people go crazy taking photos of all
kinds of familiar things. Bourdieu warned us that if the photographic practice is
closely associated with the presence of children in the home, it is because the
appearance of a child reinforces the integration of the group and the inclination to fix
an image of this unit, which in turn, will serve the purpose of reinforcing the
integration26. Like childhood, tenderness does not need words, it lives in innocent
bliss27. And if sometimes we look at our loved ones as they sleep, as if we had grasped
a secret difficult to explain, on other occasions we spend our time with photographs
that seem to be as fleeting as a dream and, nevertheless, they are solemn and
memorable28. In the first photographs of the face of subjects there was a silence in
which, as Benjamin said, the sight could repose, there everything was prepared to last
for ever: the prolonged immobility of the models made the instant almost
inhabitable29. Ultimately, photography and particularly the portrait must be silent30.
It is a commonplace now to say that we could not go through a day without seeing
a photograph. We are surrounded by advertising hoardings, newsphotos, magazine
covers, window displays and posters of all kinds. But amongst all these there is a
special kind of photograph, more pressing and more intimate. These are the
photographs we carry in our wallets, set on our sideboards and mantelpieces, collect
in albums, and stick in our passports, bus passes or student cards. They are images of
ourselves, our family, our friends; portraits whose meaning and value lie in countless
social exchanges and rituals which would now seem incomplete without
photography.12.
We can all take photos, we all want to capture the faces of those we love. Finally,
thanks to photography, we can do just that directly.13
We ought to remember that photography triggered an inexorable crisis in miniature
portraiture14, given that it made it possible to capture the image of an individual
(reflecting his importance) as well as aiding the constitution of the middle class, for
example with the popularization of the calling card15. Nadar, who obviously knew
the people he portrayed very well, pointed out that the photo is a wonderful
discovery, a science that has attracted the best minds, an art that excites the most
astute intellects . . . and which can be practiced by any fool . . . Photographic theory
can be shown in one hour and the basic technique in one day. Yet what cannot be
taught is a feel for light . . . It is the way in which light falls on a face that you as an
artist must capture. Nor can one teach people how to capture the personality of each
individual. To produce an intimate likeness and not a trivial portrait nor the mere
result of chance, you should communicate with the person, judge their thoughts and
their character16. Yet to achieve this intimacy is by no means easy, and even when the
artist takes his own self-portrait he can shift from dignitas to radical camouflage17 or
the sarcasm of abysmal deception as one can appreciate in this photograph by
Hippolyte Bayard titled Self-portrait of a Drowned Man (1840) which allegorizes, with
a mix of humour and drama, his economic-professional misfortune18. While what
defines us is obviously our face, that which everybody contemplates, what emits signs
since our childhood onwards, is also a mystery, the nearest thing to all of us, but at
the same time the part of the body that is most difficult to apprehend, because to do
so requires an operation of objectivisation and recognition19. We want to see the
character, and our curiosity for the image of the other, especially when that somebody
is famous, grows stronger all the time20. In photos we can see faces that look straight
ahead, with the usual rhetoric of solemnity and sincerity, while at once trying to
reveal the essence of the subject, in some cases they move us and it seems that they
are also looking for friendliness; perhaps Lewis Hine was looking for a compassionate
gaze in his photos of working children, in a frontal melancholy. The photograph of
a face taken head-on is not always, and by no means, the place of recognition of a
ENGLISH TRANSLATION
Sometimes we must seek beauty, not in the canon, but in the marginal, in anonymous
people, while other faces are protected from the harshness of the camera31.
Photography shows us a prior reality, and even if it does give us the impression of
ideality, it is never experienced as purely illusory: it is the document of a reality from
which we are sheltered32. We find it extremely difficult to focus on what is close to
us or maybe it is that we do not want to contemplate it; the eyes of some portrayed
subjects look somewhere else33, they hide away the apostrophe of their madness. In
photographs we can see that what was seen is not just something that was in the past
but that it is also makes real the truth that it is that, a kind of mad truth34 that has
something to do with the suffering of love. It is in the cracks between the fullness of
experience and the blankness of symbolism where desire is born; unquestionably
photographs trap the occasion, that which touches us, something which happened
561
faces when they are not aware that they are being observed that is never seen in the
opposite case. The photographer thus becomes a kind of busybody of crime47.
once and which remains for ever35. As Susan Sontag astutely put it, a photograph is
both a pseudo-science and a token of absence. Like a wood fire in a room,
photographs especially those of people, of distant landscapes and faraway cities, of
the vanished past are incitements to reverie. The sense of the unattainable that can
be evoked by photographs feeds directly into the erotic feelings of those for whom
desirability is enhanced by distance. The lovers photograph hidden in a married
womans wallet, the poster photograph of a rock star tacked up over an adolescent
bed, the campaign-button image of a politicians face pinned on a voters coat, the
snapshot of a cabdrivers children clipped to the visor all such talismanic uses of
photographs express a feeling both sentimental and implicitly magical: they are
attempts to contact or lay claim to another reality36. From the stupefaction produced
when we discover our image in the mirror we arrive at a commotion of the
photograph that seems as if it were a form of resurrection37: the portrait retains an
absence38. The subject of desire is neither seer nor seen; it makes itself seen. The
subject poses as an object in order to be a subject.39. And, at once, every photograph
is a unique object because it allows us to possess a loved person or thing. We look at
a well-known face, even our own, and we can see that it has been transformed into a
ghost40.
We could speak of the appearance of a distance no matter how near it might seem to
us, yet now what we need, more than the aura, is the photographic air48.
One of the most decisive moments in modern art is the shift from the aesthetic of the
collage, originally pictorial based, to experimental photomontage49. We ought to bear
in mind that Benjamin related the processes of photomontage with the epic theatre
of Brecht, and in both cases what was at stake was eschewing an illusion of realism
and showing social life, like Heartfield did, as something we can take apart and
modify. Here the collapse of the aura meant the beginning of a political
consciousness. The allegorical nature of the strategy of the montage50 or the
experimentation with the camera by the Russian constructivists, with their
investigations into the possibilities of plastic space51, produced a different appearance
that the art of our time has been able to accept on very few occasions.
Claude Lvi-Strauss recalls how, in the former sense, bricoleur was applied to ball
games and billiards, to hunting, shooting and riding, yet always used with reference
to some extraneous movement: a ball rebounding, a dog straying or a horse swerving
from its direct course to avoid an obstacle. And in our own time the bricoleur is still
someone who works with his hands and uses devious means compared to those of a
craftsman52. I am referring to an artistic activity that implies getting by with what
youve got, a making do, the need to work with a finite group of instruments and
heteroclite materials, but the composition is the contingent result of all the occasions
the artist has had to renew or enrich his stock, or to maintain it with the remains of
previous constructions or destructions53. In bricolage one intervenes with an
extreme sense of instrumentality, but at the same time as the subject remakes an
inventory of the things he is going to use, he also treats this material as if it were a
treasure. It is worth bearing in mind that these collected elements are preconstrained;
the bricoleur, of course, is focussed on a collection of residues of human works, that
is to say, to a cultural subgroup, operating not so much with concepts, but by means
of signs: there is a kind of dismantling in which the signified is transformed into the
signifying54. Besides this dislocation between the instrumental structure and the
project we could also add what the surrealists called objective chance. The subject,
shaking off his attachments, must discover the signified where he can, without
renouncing the immediate pleasure of the contemplation of what are, strictly
speaking, artificial arrangements. The ironic game of similitude and difference, of
the familiar and the strange, the here and now (explicit in bricolage) is the
characteristic process of global modernity. Having said that, the characteristic
feature of mythical thought, as of bricolage on the practical plane, is that it builds
up structured sets, not directly with other structured sets but by using the remains
and debris of events; in French des bribes et des morceaux or odds and ends in
English, fossilized evidence of the history of an individual or a society55. It seems to
me that this description of the bricoleur as somebody who elaborates structures by
arranging events or, better still, the residues of events, gives good account of the
works of some contemporary artists who grant importance to the occasion and who,
naturally, work with remains, spolia, with a fluctuating logic similar to the
unconsciousness56. Claude Lvi-Strauss claimed, in The Savage Mind, that the
Some photos, like those by Atget, are intriguing: there is something missing in the
atmosphere. As Walter Benjamin said, the city in these pictures is swept clean like a
house which has not yet found its new tenant41. They are images that generate,
more than analysis, a fantasising42, a fascination with the crime which, once
poeticised, forecloses all justice43. This space in which we find the traces of human
presence, favourably viewed even by Greenberg44, is in many ways foundational.
It turns out that the resistance to illiteracy with which I began also involves the
photographer too, who must know what sort of guilty shot he has taken, he has to
interpret his disturbing visions: Not for nothing were pictures of Atget compared
with those of the scene of a crime. But is not every spot of our cities the scene of a
crime? every passerby a perpetrator? Does not the photographer descendant of
augurers and haruspices uncover guilt in his pictures? It has been said that not he
who is ignorant of writing but ignorant of photography will be the illiterate of the
future. But isnt a photographer who cant read his own pictures worth less than an
illiterate? Will not captions become the essential component of pictures?45.
As Pierre Bourdieu wrote Looking without being seen, without being seen looking
and without being looked at, or candidly, so to speak, and, to an even greater extent,
taking photographs in this way, amounts to the theft of the images of other people.
Looking at the person who is looking (or who is taking the photograph), correcting
ones posture, one presents oneself to be looked at as one seeks to be looked at; one
presents ones own image. In short, faced with a look which captures and
immobilises appearances, adopting the most ceremonial bearing means reducing the
risk of clumsiness and gaucherie and giving others an image of oneself that is affected
and pre-defined. Like respect for etiquette, frontality is a means of effecting ones
own objectification: offering a regulating image of oneself is a way of imposing the
rules of ones own perception46. A good example of this seeing without being seen is
the photos Walker Evans made in the metro between 1939 and 1941 with a camera
hidden about his person; the photographer saw how there was something in peoples
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Philippe Dubois defined three historical positions with respect to the reality principle
in photography: to consider it as a mirror of reality, as a principle of transformation
of the real or as a trace or print of a reality (mimesis, deconstruction and discourse of
the index). Photography would be above all an index73, marked by the following
principles: physical connection, singularity, designation and a bearing witness.
Rosalind Krauss claimed that when speaking of the index she was referring to the
type of sign that is presented as a physical manifestation of a cause, examples of
which are traces prints and indexes74. The index has no code and, as a consequence,
requires a text to be decoded. The photograph is the imaginary, its power responds
to its identity as an index and its signified lies in the modalities of identification that
associate it with the imaginary. Again Krauss has to repeat the Barthesian motif that
the photograph is a message sans code75.
Benjamin said that the most exact technology can confer products with a magical
quality that a painted image will never have: All the artistic preparations of the
photographer and all the design in the positioning of his model to the contrary, the
viewer feels an irresistible compulsion to seek the tiny spark of accident, the here and
now. In such a picture, that spark has, as it were, burned through the person in the
image with reality, finding the indiscernible place in the condition of that long past
minute where the future is nesting, even today, so eloquently that we looking back
can discover it. It is a different nature which speaks to the camera than speaks to the
eye: so different that in place of a space consciously woven together by a man on the
spot there enters a space held together unconsciously62. In the same way as our
image, reflected in a mirror, can surprise us as something uncanny63, the photograph
with its absolute freezing puts a spell on us.
Zizek maintained that among the antagonisms defining our age, perhaps a key place
goes to the antagonism between abstraction, increasingly more to the fore in our
lives, and the inundation of pseudo-concrete images. If we can understand
abstraction as the progressive self-discovery of the material bases of art, in a process
of singular depictorialization77, we must also understand that in this process we find
the central core of modernism. There might be a fear of the concrete in the abstract,
a feature of agoraphobia. Photography is, in its modern drift, full of sleights of hands,
with a proliferation of remains, doubled roles, the dust and shavings of the real.
Perhaps it is an example that there is nothing to say.78
At the beginning of Camera Lucida, Barthes associated the photograph with what
Lacan calls the tuch, the Occasion, the Encounter, the Real in its indefatigable
expression79. We should be clear on the fact that encounter is a lost encounter, like
that object that can only be recovered in losing it80. And therein lies the trauma: the
real is that which always lies behind the automaton81. The real is invaded by an
anxiety of repetition which tries to compensate for the fact that one always arrives
too early, or too late, to find it82. The lost encounter does not produce recognition
rather a sense of unease, a need to interpret and to repeat.
The emotion in a photo comes from the charge of the memory. This is particularly
obvious when it is a photo of something that we have seen. For instance, a photo of
a house where we once lived for a while. The photo of our mother when she was still
young64. I look at photographs and I see what wounds me or, perhaps better put,
that which pricks me, what Barthes called the punctum65; in them we see the aging of
people and, of course, of ourselves, a frozen past appears, we become conscious that
the photograph that invites sentimentalism and tender contemplation is the
inventory of mortality66. Barthes himself said that the photograph is close to
Theatre by dint of the singular mediation of death: the photograph is undialectical:
it is a denatured theatre where death cannot be contemplated, reflected and
interiorized; or again: the dead theatre of Death the foreclosure of the Tragic,
excludes all purification, all catharsis67. Yet it reveals not only the radical finitude
and the implacable erosion of time, but also that in the photograph the historical
disappearance of the subject is produced68.
Andr Bazin claimed that the aesthetic virtues of photography lie in its power to
reveal the real: It is not for me to separate off, in the complex fabric of the objective
world, here a reflection on a damp sidewalk, there the gesture of a child. Only the
impassive lens, stripping its object of all those ways of seeing it, those piled-up
preconceptions, that spiritual dust and grime with which my eyes have covered it, is
able to present it in all its virginal purity to my attention and consequently to my love.
By the power of photography, the natural image of a world that we neither know nor
can know, nature at least does more than imitate art: she imitates the artist83.
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563
If, on one hand, photography and cinema are tied in with technologies of control, on
the other hand they presuppose the end of transparency, they plunge disciplinary
visibility into an abysm94, the archive that grows dizzyingly in modernity95. It is
worthwhile recalling the fact that photography, used for the construction of police
records, had an almost mathematizing pitch96. Ian Jeffrey considers that
photography, despite its potential for supervision and control, has been mainly a
vernacular art medium, sensitive to the changes in popular mood97.
Benjamin pointed out that modernism has often tended to take photographs, for
instance, of a humble house in a neighbourhood or a pile of rubbish in order to
transform this degraded reality: it has managed to turn the most deject poverty,
portrayed elegantly and with technical perfection into a subject to be contemplated
with pleasure.
Our society suffers, in different ways, from the archive fever which has substituted
historic illness whereby we consider ourselves posthumous men, and an absolute
availability establishes a type of dematerialization which would correlatively lead
to a reterritorialization of the forms of power. The archive, nucleus of our economy
and epistemological configuration, is located or housed in the scene of the collapse
of the memory, there is no archive without a place of consignation, without a
technique of repetition, and without a certain exteriority. No archive without
It is also true that some photographers like Lewis Hine have managed, by means of
his photographs of children labouring in sweatshops and factories, victims of
capitalist slavery, to bring out despite everything a sparkle of hope, and his
photographs looked to the future as they disclosed present hardship105.
In many photographs of poverty we can find blatant opportunism which transforms
everything, even the suffering of others, into something spectacular and
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565
death shrouds, sheets covering accumulations as if they were dustcovers for furniture
in a closed-up house, the boards with layered images are presences with a mixture of
harshness and tenderness. Boltanski tries to pay homage to the difficulty in
articulating the suffering in contemporaneity. The death instinct is articulated
dialectically, on a paradoxical edge, in a time of precariousness, when secularization
has produced barren ground. My work Boltanski claimed, is a theatre play where
the public do no recognise a playwright, yet in which they involve themselves, and
that is what I am truly interested in. A work that speaks of abstract and obscene
death, of the feeling of guilt or the sleights of hand of reality, it demands a radical
proximity, a personal confrontation. He comes up with recourses to avoid sterile
repetition, the cloning imposed by the minimalist drifts, imbuing nihilism with a
truly corrosive tone. As opposed to the merely decorative aspect or the neutrality of
the museum, this artist elaborates a mourning that affects the collective memory, that
introduces politics in a non-institutional way. Monuments of the ephemeral that are,
simultaneously, that which interests the storyteller, the terrible hermetic space from
which he has, timelessly, taken the strength to keep on living. Nihilism is understood
as a deconstruction of meaning, even in the very claim that everything is nothing; the
negative dialectic screams in silence that things cannot go on any longer as they are,
it keeps on going without bunkering in the consciousness of defeat. Experience
undoes itself, and in the fissure of inconsequence there rises a world of images from
nothingness that lingers like a faint glow. The poetic labour or the task of art is to
accept the loss of language in its native land: the foreignness of our existence.
Melancholy makes an appearance like a moment of equilibrium in this wandering,
the sudden encounter that softens the blow of the harsh indifference that perhaps is
no more than the confessable face of nostalgia. The remains of an absent body.
Melancholy and uncanniness are feelings not totally unlike each other, the familiar is
distanced, the gaze finds no recourse like, for instance catharsis, which might be able
to avoid the cause of pain. Time leaves its mark on all things, the temperature of the
skin has been buried. Even still the repressed returns and with it a feeling of
renouncement. Boltanski rewrites this symbolic exchange that revolves around
death: the multiplicity of events, and the refined humour that sanctions them
produces a frozen smile. Like Beckett, this artist has put a name on the radical
extreme divested of the imaginary, he maintains a dry ornamentation: he creates an
exile of the vision. A multiplication of faces, transformed into strata of a memory that
clings to the skin when the shipwreck is imminent. Dismantling a face is not a simple
task. Deleuze reminds us that by doing so it is possible to fall into madness. It is not
by chance that the schizophrenic loses the sense of face at the same time as his sense
of self and of language and its prevailing meanings. To dismantle the face, as stated
in A Thousand Plateaus is the same as breaching the wall of the signifier, leaving
behind the black hole of subjectivity. Head hunters that cover over their tracks, the
territory in which identity had tried to put down its foundations. A creative flight
that is a hidden drift of life, a path to excess. It is perhaps sustained on the limit of
inhumanity. The narcissist mechanism is absorbed by presences that contain
something of the phantasmagorical, an invocation of the pain of others that can also
move us. Photography radicalises the self reflection of modern man by means of the
obstinacy of the referent. The disorder of objects that photography leads to is
generally manifested as the persistence of the loved body. The terrible return of death
which Barthes speaks about in Camera Lucida comes down specifically to a reflection
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of the identity surviving in the flow of time. There are certain characteristics of
contingency in that which is caught, even a degree of strangeness in that which
wanted to remain close. What is disconcerting about these images is found in their
proposal of a utopian time, put on hold and, yet, marked by a shadow of nostalgia.
The precise localisation of he who sees converts what is seen into a terrifying space
and a wound that can never be healed is opened up in an instant. In Boltanskis
works the detail has been sacrificed, an excessive light: the faces have remained
trapped by the technical multiplication of light. Barthes thought that photography
should be compared not with painting but with theatre, as they are both expressions
of death, although it also retains a relationship, through condensation, with the
haiku. The important thing is the movement which triggered off by the images, the
crossing of the shadow, the aura articulated in these configurations: the movement of
the affectionate conscience, a gaze that should be called pietas. Photography is the
pretext for something that can only be indirectly spoken: what is loved, but also the
conversion of the real into something that cannot be touched. In these works
concerned with time, photographs in which there is no future, there is nothing to be
added: therein lies their pathos, their melancholia; through the invocation of many
images death appears in all its simplicity, removed from ideas of tragedy and
purification: time is blocked. The artist goes directly to the commonplace and
elaborates a memorial of mourning116. A catastrophe of finitude, a coupling of the
event and the drama, limit possibilities of expression. Boltanski knows well that the
tragic event is cosmic, what happens in the baroque drama takes place before the eyes
of all those in mourning: history is unfolded as an ostentation of sadness, a natural
cycle. Boltanskis aesthetic could be understood as trauerspiel (baroque drama and
play of mourning), entertainment for the sorrowful: contemplating the spectacle
mourners go deeper into their being. The melancholic subject gazes at the earth to
see the signs of expiration, its extensive experience of the ephemeral, but also to feel
that in this dark background there are countless treasures waiting to be discovered:
melancholia betrays the world for a love of wisdom. But its stubborn contemplative
absorption takes over things in order to save them. The baroque has made this
journey of pain that takes no pleasure in beauty nor in the harmonic promises of
classicism; it has placed itself in mortality, in the fragility of the human and that is
why it has only managed to find its means of expression in the allegory. Processes of
allegorisation on death and the feeling of guilt, works that come together in the
excessive experience of the religious yet differentiated because they do not transmit
any idea of reconciliation. It is a dissonance of feeling, of the reintroduction of
finitude that would be obscene, an abstract though inevitable event. Boltanski makes
his own particular reading of the Jewish tradition, its long experience of exile, as well
as the specific suffering of the Second World War. Men were reduced to the basest
level of objects, the corpse vanishes and, paradoxically, the memory is transformed
into banal. In each gaze there is a gap, a fissure, in which one can recognise the
oscillation between victim or criminal. Interrogation lamps focussed on photographs,
altars on which candles flicker behind sheets, walls that compartmentalise places of
cult. A religion that is a foreclosed dialogue with those that cannot respond. Naked
relics in which the face has been transformed into a sense of vertigo. As Boltanski
himself said some pictures only invite us to pray and take communion, others
question us. I feel closer to the latter. Nonetheless, I am sorry that I am not more
religious. I would have liked to be a real painter, but I reject it, that is my
ENGLISH TRANSLATION
misfortune. What is then left open to him are these monuments they resemble little
chapels117. Freud said that melancholia is ambivalent, and it triggers off a regression
of the libido to narcissism. The conflict that arises in the self, and which melancholia
usually substitutes with a struggle around the object, must act like a painful wound
that demands an extraordinarily high countercharge. Struggles around the object
that cannot be verbally articulated other than in repetition. Boltanski remains in the
territory in which mirrors return no image whatsoever, arriving to the faciality of
the conscience and of passion, the redundancy of resonance and coupling. A political
multiplicity of the face: sustaining the voice. It says what has no name. A catalogue
of emotions or, to be more precise, disorder and potential of the limit-faces. A
narration adopted to a time of hardship: the subject vanishes in its spatialization.
Shadows, altars, clothes strewn on the ground. Lights, lights: opening ones eyes to
see the darkness. A flash that wants to do more than simply console, as Celan wrote
the dead keep on begging. A shadowy memory, just before forgetfulness comes to
take away the faces.
Susan Sontag writes Ones first encounter with the photographic inventory of
ultimate horror is a kind of revelation, the prototypically modern revelation: a
negative epiphany. For me, it was photographs of Bergen-Belsen and Dachau which
I came across by chance in a bookstore in Santa Monica in July 1945. Nothing I have
seen in photographs or in real life ever cut me as sharply, deeply,
instantaneously. Indeed, it seemed plausible to me to divide my life into two parts,
before I saw those photographs (I was twelve) and after, though it was several years
before I understood fully what they were about118.
We have to repeat it: the catastrophe has already happened. We are going currently
through what Freud called Nachtrglichkeit, the human feeling of having arrived
after the events, the human nightmare that something terrible has already happened.
In the mid nineteenth century there was a proliferation of the representations of
accidents and catastrophes, as opposing and, at the same time, symmetrical situations
of domestic stillness, of those interiorities replete with objects. An era enamoured
with visual surprises was entertained by the derailing of a train or a building on fire,
examples of maximum formal anarchy119. The modern landscape also pays tribute to
the catastrophe, for instance in the photographs Roger Fenton made during the
Crimean war120, especially the one of the Valley of the Shadow of Death (1855), with a
road snaking though a barren, featureless landscape littered with cannonballs. A
strange place in which the fear of something that has happened is coupled with
fantasy.
Our world, with its overdose of terror, strives for literal description, the
punctualization of the worst. We could return to Leonardo da Vincis
recommendation to represent the battle by means of corpses half-covered by dust,
painting the blood with its own colour, also mixed with dust, while men clinch their
teeth or beat their fists against their heads in the agony of death. One must detail
unsettling images, with the certainty that the pitiless gaze of art always goes beyond
the limits of fear121.
The word catastrophe, a term in rhetoric designating the final and main event in a
poem or a tragedy, is underscored, at the beginning of the 21st century, by the state of
567
rayographs, are like ghostly traces of departed objects; they look like footprints in
sand, or marks that have been left in dust140.
emergency. The Grand Demolition is, unquestionably, the greatest event, that which is
difficult to think and which introduced itself immediately into the realm of the
spectacular-artistic. The remains of the Twin Towers were still smouldering when
Stockhausen pronounced the phrase: that it was the total work of art, the greatest that
had ever been seen. Perhaps it was no more than a lapsus, something that drops out
of your mouth122 while the more common response is a litany of a date, a kind of
strange spell that proves that nothing has been understood, yet we can still observe that
this para-Wagnerian citation is a cheap provocation123. Because, as opposed to the
event, it is too late for art or, to put it another way, there is no room for aesthetic
sublimation124. Perhaps, there where some people saw the materialization of the
terrible-sublime125 we can only find the pornographic drive126. It is hard to get over the
shock of the stupidity and, what is worse, we know that things are only getting
worse. Now it does not even make sense, in a Beckettian sense, to discuss whether it
is sawdust or sand that is most necessary127. The ordeal of the event has as its tragic
correlate not what is presently happening or what has happened in the past, but the
precursory signs of what threatens to happen. It is the future that determines the
unappropriability of the event, not the present or the past. Or at least, if it is the
present or the past, it is only insofar as it bears on its body the terrible sign of what
might or perhaps will take place, which will be worse than anything that has ever taken
place128. Rubble can be quickly cleared to one side, and we can then see the naked lot
and understand that what remains is dust, not even the remains of what has been
burnt: definitive dirt129. Aristotle warned that the accident reveals the substance130,
while Rene Thom, in Stabilit structurelle et morphognese, said that it is tempting to
view the history of nations as a series of catastrophes131. Conflating both ideas, we
could posit that our situation is (post)historically coded in the photograph of the
executive covered in dust and soot, sitting with his computer in the midst of the
rubble of the Twin Towers. We inevitably (overexposed to public horror) sublimate
the catastrophe: the photographic sediment of the Grand Demolition has a strange
beauty, though saying so is almost sacrilegious132. We are rocked to sleep by the video
of the planes crashing into the architectural emblems of power. Fortunately we are
at home, far away (is what we think from our position of imperial cynicism) from
where terrible things happen133. We are compulsive channel-hoppers and we come across
all kinds of madness, the serious ravages of the epidemic of stupidity: things are so
drastic that laughter has to be canned. On the other hand everything is mutilated,
humour itself has become foolish, ridiculous134. The gaze of the catatonic-spectator
does not want to settle on what surrounds him, he prefers to surrender to the mediatic
catastrophe that inhabits the home which, as we all know, is a place where everything
can go wrong135. We are afraid to turn our heads around because, maybe, like in
Angelus Novus, we will only see mounds of ruins136.
Perhaps if the air were the place of images, then dust might become the pigment of
the aura141. Let us consider the strange presence of Marcel Duchamps Piston de
Courant DAir (Draft Piston) (1914), as infrathin (an allegory of forgetfulness), as a
spiders web142. This artists pseudo-experiments led him to consider projected
shadows, photographic impressions143. The Duchampian optic of precision is, in
many ways, a starting point144, the challenge of the window display that leads to a
beauty of indifference, that serves as one of the foundations of the museal drive145.
The detritus, the unnameable things fallen to the ground or, to be more precise, on
the Large Glass, are fixed (randomness preserved) on a surface of a deceptive, cracked
and, still today, provocatively enigmatic transparency. This Elevage de poussire
(photographed by Man Ray in 1920) is the zero degree of the contemporary
scatological-catastrophic imaginary. Undoubtedly, this dust breeding is one of the
most solid examples of the indexical or, to be more precise, it is the physical index of
the passing of time146.
Residues are accumulating everywhere. Some people try to parody the strange
breeding, like Paul Pouvreau who photographed, without any element of the
sublime, dust in a kind of absurd geometrization147.
We might very well consider Rauschenbergs picture plane as a rubbish tip, a
switching centre. The pictures flatness as Leo Steinberg astutely put it, was to be
no more of a problem than the flatness of a disordered desk or an unswept floor.
Against Rauschenbergs picture plane you can pin or project any image because it
will not work as the glimpse of a world, but as a scrap of printed material148.
Revolving doors. A Duchampian door which, on opening, closes the way to another room.
Another open door: plate six in The Pencil of Nature by William Henry Fox Talbot. A
broom, a horse-harness next to a darkened doorway in shadow, a pre-text for a rural
story. As the photographer himself said of this picture, this is one of the trifling
efforts of its [photographys] infancy, which some partial friends have been kind
enough to commend. We have sufficient authority in the Dutch School of art for
taking as subjects of representation scenes of daily and familiar occurrence. A
painters eye will often be arrested where ordinary people see nothing remarkable. A
casual gleam of sunshine, or a shadow thrown across his path, a time-withered oak,
or a moss-covered stone may awaken a train of thoughts and feelings, and picturesque
imaginings. A scene that must be occupied by the imagination149. A still life.
It has been claimed that the still life genre tries to produce an idea of zero time or a
lasting instant, with motion itself being foreclosed; this was already put forward by
Alberti in De Pictura when he said that bodies move in different ways, waxing and
waning, stopping, changing from one place to another, but we painters, who want
to represent the movement of mood with the motion of limbs, represent movement
by merely changing place150. Still life paintings meant a displacement of interest in
action, given that properly speaking in these works nothing happens, at least in terms
of composition, though in an allegorical substratum one can discern a desire to
represent what actually escapes all expression: death itself. If the immobile is the
instant (the time of representation of the painting), the exemplary case of this
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paradox will be the still life, which ballasts the drift until we reach the zero point,
managing to present the inexorable sense of time and the vanity of earthly pleasures;
this then made for a new paradox: to represent the passing of time (represented
time) it is necessary to put the time of representation on hold151. An empty space
stands in above all else for the absence of possible content, while still life is defined
by the presence and composition of objects, self-contained or transformed into their
own container: still life is time, for everything that changes is in time, but time itself
does not change, it cannot change itself into anything other than another time, until
infinity.152. Time is the visual reserve of what happens in exactness or, in other
words, the horizon of events, a succession of moments that has been detained in the
still life. Schopenhauer classified still life painting as a kind of charm, something he
also finds in the arrangement of a naked body in a calculated fashion to trigger off
sexual desire, though properly speaking in these pictures there is no agitation of the
senses rather the presentation of objects that do not move. Still lifes have been
deliberately arranged before the beginning of the painting: they have been laid out,
as in compositions, on the table or shelf. And they are composed in general with
objects that intrigue or move the painter. The still life is a sedentary art, connected
with the activity of running a home153.
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569
themselves. The portrait implements an objectivisation of ones self and marks the
limit of ones relationship with others. Arbus discovers a fundamental melancholy
in the human condition, a melancholy only dispelled by artifice and imagination.
The real world, a gloomy backdrop, is best shut out. Arbus and her often very
outlandish people remake conventions to suit themselves. Their starting point is
routine and the further they depart from it the happier they seem to become166.
As is logical, Arbuss characters have not escaped the aesthetic of cloning, and her
twins have been re-photographed167.
It is not true, as Greenberg had thought, that photography is a literary art, that is to say,
in these two-dimensional images the narrative overflows its limits like, for instance, in
Weegee snapshots of victims and accidents or in Robert Franks visions of America.
Frank thought that to produce an authentic contemporary document the visual impact
would have to be so strong as to annul the explanation. In his prologue to the book The
Americans Jack Kerouac said that Frank was among the tragic poets of the world, and
he eschewed the decisive moment in favour of a continuum of images168.
While it is true to say that the video can be tied in with the narcissist disposition it is
equally true that some artists have tried to use the sedimentation of the photographic
to give an account of events that overturn the idea of a stable self. Over and above a
self-complacent specularity or an automatic writing of the world (hegemonically
completed by Big Brother) there arises a possible seduction of the objects in which an
undigested irony has been removed by a subtle form of surgery. The exploration of
the self that led to the crumbling frontiers of taboo and transgression that we
associate, for instance, with the eroticism of Bataille and Bellmer perverse
exploration with the doll. This comes back with startling clarity in the work by
Klauke, a true master of contemporary art who has known how to construct a body
of work with an impressive density and inner-workings. Ranging from his
dreamlike drawings dating from the seventies to his photographs where he makes
use of make-up to transvest himself, yet not so much toward the feminine as to a kind
of hybridsim, this artist has given us incredibly powerful images, like those in which
he wears phallic breast prosthesis, which have influenced or have been literally
copied by many other artists. We have witnessed how intimacy has disappeared in
the contemporary world, perhaps by dint of the dissolution of community and the
complicity that allowed it to happen. It is now extremely difficult to admit, though
that would be the proper artistic thing to do, our nullity. What we have at hand are
the masks which we present as other than ourselves, thanatophilic systems of
protection, the certainty that we must fulfil the (Victorian) imperative of taking
pleasure in our symptom. It is not so much, in Foucauldian terms, a rigorous art of
looking after oneself, as much as a singular estrangement of the body, something
similar to what Lacan called extimit (extimacy), a complex process in which we
establish a profound relationship with the Thing. In a work titled Ruinous process of
artistic creation (1996-97), Klauke appears elegantly dressed, suspended on strings
like a puppet, that drop him until he almost falls on some containers filled with filth,
while in Renovation of existence (1996-97), horizontally on a table he begins to swings
between two pillows: the abject and the oneiric: a primordial repugnance and the
desire to find a place in which to rest are side by side. The subject is, properly
speaking, a thing that intervenes in a strange event, leaving the meaning open or, in
other words, suggesting an enigma (the density of metaphors) as something that
happily removes us from banal-glamorous literalism. With an odd sense of humour
that underscores the absurd, Klauke tries to formalize boredom. His sequences of
photographs contain something of the theatre of gestures, in a kind of updating of
Kafkas idea of a scene where everyone is called upon to represent his own role, with
all the difficulties that this implies. The stage is bare, we might say that we are
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these impacts can lead the subject to a sensorial numbing or, in Virilios terms,
picnolepsia, the inexplicable emergence of absent time191.
attending a minimal play just before the lights go down forever; the elements of a
few chairs, walking sticks, a table with balloons full of a dark liquid attached to its
legs are, together with the artist, phlegmatic and at once clownish, the only elements
he needs to compose dense allegories of life and death, sex and the inexorable passing
of time. Klauke is not afraid of the ridiculous, and in fact he knows that the fate of
the self is to be utterly annihilated. While the table, the stage of the world, is raised
up and the balloons fall to the earth (symbols both of fragility as well as the
turbulence of desire), naked masculine and feminine bodies (located in drastically
separated territories), sketch movements of a dance that our anxious gaze cannot
complete. Kevin Power wondered whether Klaukes authentic perversion would not
actually be his desperate clinging to a lost existential self, his refusal to participate in
the virtual choreography of the dance that he himself has chosen183. Nobody knows
what a body is capable of. Perhaps we can slide to the end of the table, just at that
point before falling off, desperately waiting for something to happen, although it
might be an event of blurred meanings, gestures that are a heroic line of resistance
against the culture of gesticulation.
In a text dating from 1980 Sherrie Levine spoke of her work in connection with a
family anecdote: Since the door was only half closed, I got a tumbled view of my
mother and father on the bed, one on top of the other. Mortified, hurt, horror struck,
I had the hateful sensation of having placed myself blindly and completely in
unworthy hands. Instinctively and without effort, I divided myself, so to speak, into
two persons, one of whom, the real, the genuine one, continued on her own account,
while the other, a successful imitation of the first, was delegated to have relations
with the world. My former self remains at a distance, impassive, ironical, and
watching.. For some theoreticians, sex does not exist without some element of
harassment, whether this be a confused gaze or the upset and trauma caused by the
ominous nature of what is happening. Zizek, for example, underlined that the
fundamental paradisiacal fantasy is to see ones parents copulating in front of their
child, who is watching them and making comments. Here, one should return to the
Freudian notion of the original Hilflosigkeit (helplessness/distress) of the infant. [ . . .
] The child is helpless, without cognitive mapping, when he or she is confronted by
the enigma of the Others jouissance, unable to symbolise the mysterious sexual
gestures and innuendos he is witnessing192. The indifference, associated with the
problematic death instinct, is something primordial for this subject who is a gap into
which the passionate attachments can fall193. We should understand the death
instinct as an ontological derailment, a gesture of dis-investiture remitting to the
dissolution of the libido: what dislocates the subject (in the process of its constitution)
is the traumatic encounter with pleasure. The I, specularly constituted, believes that
around it there is only a territory full of rubble and, precisely because of this, it is
fortified194; seeing oneself as a unitary subject implies a form of visual repression. But
Sherry Levines statement quotes another thing: Not only do we recognize this as a
description of something we already know the primal scene but our recognition
might extend even further to the Moravia novel from which it has been lifted. For
Levines autobiographical statement is only a string of quotations pilfered from
others, and if we might think this a strange way of writing about ones own working
methods, then perhaps we should turn to the work it describes195.
Without a doubt, the visual photography of the decades of the eighties would have
deconstructed the avant-garde myths of originality and novelty, at once consecrating
the defection of the Greenbergian dogma of the purity of the medium184. To a
certain extent, Newhall continued Greenbergs positions, believing that the
photograph offers a literal description of reality185.
The aesthetics disenchanted with avant-gardism and the allegorical strategies of
the eighties developed, ad nauseam, the quotation and recycling of images186. A
highly intense phenomenon of drawing forth from history: Scrutinised by the
retroactive gaze of the artist, the past, more than a source of inspiration, was turned
into working material. Recognisable images in an iconic journey through the history
of photography or even whole styles have been the target of quotation, appropriation,
reproduction, plagiarism, remake and pastiche, in function of the degree of
radicalism of the artists, postponing a universe of things and facts187. These strategies
of mimetic rivalry188 seemed to leave the exploration of power to one side. After all,
irony might simply be an alibi.
Martha Rosler sarcastically asked, what does it mean to directly reproduce wellknown photographs or photographs of well-known works of art? The range of
replies was at the very least inventive: to take the works out of their reified niches
and make them accessible to everybody (a respected curator); to reaffirm them as part
of our cultural unconscious (a recent article in the New York Times); expose the
market aspect of all works of art in the era of technological reproducibility (critics
influenced by European thinking); to protest against the overabundance of existing
imaginary (a friend of mine). Each one of these explanations remain in its own realm
of signifieds. (The clearest explanation that the artist has been able to offer has been
observations on ambivalence)189.
When speaking of avant-garde art one insistently hears the term shock, meaning the
shock that produces something more than anguish, and (if we bear in mind the term
Stoss) it is a suspension of the obviousness of the world, it produces wonder for the
very fact, in itself insignificant (remitting to nothing) that there is a world190: it could
be, pardon the imprecision, the sublime of the banal. The mechanical repetition of
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571
everything a projection screen is, with further affinities for anything that is flat and
worked over palimpsest, cancelled plate, printers proof, trial blank, chart, map,
aerial view200.
account what is now called post-cinema210, a linguistic expansion which, in fact, began
in the seventies211 and which was to have several decisive high points, among other
references, in the cinematic atopia212 of Smithson or in Broodthaerss alternative to the
discipline of motion213.
The romantic and rebel avant-garde artist was followed by the artist as court jester,
exemplarily incarnated by Warhol, the king of fools, a defender of the crosscontamination overflowing the limits of modern orthodoxy 201. As Musil believed, if
the essence of stupidity consists in a certain inadaptation with respect to the
functionality of life, its exercise would be inevitably associated with art. We could then
reaffirm Macbeths bitter statement that life is a poor player that struts and frets his
hour upon the stage. There is no need for us to tear out our hair because at the end
of the day we know that the sublime and the ridiculous are one and the same. We
would have to accept, without further ado, the punk consciousness of no future, that
we are, after all, given over to the everyday. Instead of philosophical releasement, we
are merely puckered out, like in the Warholian mortal sleep of paralysed cinema.
Sleep hypnotises us or, to put it another way, it makes us aware of the fact that we
should not be in a rush: after all, there is nowhere to go202. Just like what happened
with Warhol, we are brought to ecstasy by a kind of glacial pornography203. We are the
heirs to the mechanical memorization of life204.
Photography was revealed as one of the most powerful factors of the deconstruction
of the modernist mythology. In our days, it is heteronomy and contamination that are
normative214.
In Cindy Shermans work there is nothing if not fictions of the I215. This artist not
only disassociates her work from the object as conceptual effect but it seems that she
indirectly arrived at what Lacan called lUn-en-plus, the one that joins itself in the
series, the direct point of subjectivisation of the anonymous order that regulates the
relations between real subjects. It is worth bearing in mind that when the subject
gets too close to fantasy a (self)erasure is produced. Photography is ultimately a kind
of aphanisis216. In more topological terms: the division of the subject is not a division
between the I and an other, between two contents, but the division between something
and nothing, between the characteristic of identification and the void. Decentrement
thus first designates the ambiguity, the oscillation between symbolic and imaginary
identification the undecidability as to where my true point is, in my real self or in
my external mask, with the possible implication that my symbolic mask can be more
true than what it conceals, the true face behind it.217. This decentrement (instead of
the Carthesian screen of the central consciousness that constitutes the focal point of
subjectivity) is, to a certain extent, a means of identifying the void.
The strategy of re-photographing does not impose a strategy of the anecdote nor does
it introduce the filmic narrative, rather what it does is produce a singular veiling: the
paused images maintain the vibration, the sequence produces a borderline abstractfigurative space. There is a disintegration of the sign, a questioning of the secular
aesthetic of representation which, as I have said before, remits to the certainty that the
description, understood from a contemporary perspective, presupposes a copying of
what has already been copied205, a cross between simulacra and the vertiginous
expansion of a photographic cartography, of the drive to capture the moment. We
are aware of the fact that photography produces the real, creating the perfect conditions
for vision206, but it also veils aspects of the world in its focussing. The photographic
image (a kind of screen) has an explicit relationship with the desire and memory, but
also with that which does not want to see itself, with the collective unconscious or with
the dark side, with the opposite of that reality in which we inhabit.
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It is not as if everything that is photographed is always lost, it is more that the face is
always other229. As Victor Burgin wrote in everyday social life, the bearer of the
identity is the face, in such a way that exchanging our own face for that of another
person presupposes accepting the place that the other person occupies in society230.
The photograph is the advent of itself as other, the face is full of signs and indexes
that force us to project on it all types of intentions231.
I am trapped by the Byzantine gazes of Avedons portraits232. The indescribable
luxury of vagabonds, the sparkle in their eyes, the feeling that, despite everything, they
aspire to heroism.
A photograph can function (hermeneutically speaking) as a shifter.
The shifter is Jakobsons term for that category of linguistic sign which is filled
with signification only because it is empty. The word this is such a sign, waiting
each time it is invoked for its referent to be supplied. This chair, this table, or
this . . . and we point to something lying on the desk. Not that, this, we say. The
personal pronouns I and you are also shifters. As we speak to one another, both of
us using I and you, the referents of those words keep changing places across the
space of our conversation. I am the referent of I only when I am the one who is
speaking. When it is your turn, it belongs to you233.
We could recover Saussure who posited the sign as a substitute of an always absent
referent, in such a way that the absence is the condition proper to the representation
of the sign.
The photographic process is used to produce a paradox: the paradox of reality
transformed into sign or the presence transformed into absence, in representation, in
empty space, in writing. Reality was both extended and replaced or supplanted by
that master supplement which is writing: the paradoxical writing of the
photograph.234.
We revolve around a complex desire to photograph, something old yet still valid235.
Right from the very beginning, photography is a simulacrum236.
In his essay Photography, or The Writing of Light, Jean Baudrillard claims that
against meaning and its aesthetic, the subversive function of the image is to discover
literality in the object, itself an expression of literality, what it is at its core: the magical
operator of realitys disappearance237. As opposed to the referentialist illusion and any
sensation of proximity (whether auratic or psychotic), photography keeps the world
at a distance, creating an artificial depth of field that protects us from the imminence
of objects. Having said that, it also turns out that contemporary artists, in what we
might coin an academic postmodernism, tend to construct a simulacrum that
sediments as an image thanks to the photographic or filmic devices. Without a doubt,
one of the clearest instances of this form of behaviour can be found in the work of
Thomas Demand. Demand constructs places and things with incredible precision to
then take singularly formalist photos of them. I am thinking of the wonderful models
he made based on a prototype for the German pavilion designed by the architect
Albert Speer for the International Exposition in Paris in 1937, taken from a photo of
the period. The German artist supplements this photographic appropriationism with a
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Vik Munizs works are memorabilia in which he recovers and transforms the primary
image of things, starting out from a photographic image or a memory of it which he
amplifies and translates with a non-noble material until achieving a painting that he
then photographs. Using material like wire or thread with incredible skill coupled
with perishable substances like sugar, dust or chocolate, he emphasises the temporal
aspect of it all. As he said, at the beginning of the eighties he bought a copy of the
book The Best of Life, which compiled photos of historical moments. Then he lost the
book on a beach a few years afterwards and it was this event that triggered off his
reconstruction of memories. This tremendously curious artist with a refined sense of
humour (capable of constructing a skull with a round nose as if it were clown,
573
If, on the one hand, there is an ecstasy of vision we are also aware that, for instance
in cybernetic hyperrealism, we come across a kind of blind spot245. The treasure still
waiting to be found, a luxury (agalma) is the Real, something that resists all
sublimation.
In his essay Photography published in 1927, Sigfried Kracauer pointed out that
historicist thinking came about more or less at the same time as modern
photographic technology made its appearance; in a certain sense, the use of
photography is the play of life and death of the historic process: What photographs
try to proscribe with their accumulation is the recollection of death, which forms part
of all image-memory . . . The world has become a photographable present, and the
photographed present has become completely eternal. Apparently snatched from the
clutches of death, in truth it has succumbed even more to them.
Deadpan aesthetics246.
The history of photography Daniel Girardin warned us, ought to be understood
within the movement that ranges from the tradition of the Holy Shroud and
Veronicas veils to the plates of the 18th Encyclopaedia, passing through the
dispute of the iconodules and the iconoclasts and afterwards the Renaissance, of which
photography made some of the ideological ideals of beauty and truth247.
Without transcendence, something merely funny and scruffy, things keep on turning,
one thing leading to another, like in the video by Fischli & Weiss Der Lauf der Dinge
(1987) or it could be all about celebrating the everyday like in Chantier BarbsRochechouart (1994) by Pierre Huyghe (eschewing all ellipsis) that layers what
happens onto the advertising mediation of itself248.
Artists as erratic anthropologists249.
As Perniola rightfully put it, we are now all more or less competent and able
performers, and that makes the demand for a unique, singular and incomparable
performance all the more serious and pressing. The two basic traditions of
performance, rooted in the spiritual (usually mystic-orientalizing) and the
athletic (choreographic, excessive, sweaty)250, have been superseded by the
scatological passion and the all-embracing spiders web of the reality show. Once and
for all, we have been able to confirm that perversion is not subversive, and the
opposite in fact is more true, what the intertwining of ridicule with apocalyptic
braying and obscene confessionality with a melodramatic drive actually do is
strengthen the fossil state of the conscience. Many actions now take place in front of
a video camera, a photographic camera or the electronic space of the Web, while real
time has been submitted to a spatial dilatation or dislocation. The processual dimension
is central in the actions of many contemporary creators who are working with
hybridisation in a world that has been transformed into a non-place, where strategic
devices are possible. Photographs and videos are the supports on which performative
behaviours are sedimented, in what I call paradoxes of documentation, or in other
words, in a situation above and beyond the Fluxus conception of the action as
something ephemeral and, in many cases, anti-museographical. It is true to say that
one of the artists who has most lucidly developed the style of photo-performance is
Erwin Wurm. Wurms humoristic allusion to the politically correct brackets a
series of ecclesial actions: a priest lying down on a church pew, another with an
That anti-naturalness of the post-modern image239, those photos of photos, can cast a
spell but they also lead, with all their (no)ideology, to deception240.
A hand that writes and erases on a palimpsest. The (distant) memory of the erased
drawing. A sous rature. More than a classroom blackboard, a wunderblock. Truly, at
the very basis of the Wunderblock there is a superficial entwining of inscriptions, a
network of erasures that make any writing possible241.
We are living at a time when the decisive moment is a mere chimera. In the
cybernetic society, there is a new form of understanding time and history242. Today
the crisis of the statute of truth of the photograph leads to the understanding that
with the emergence of digital and electronic production of images, even the final
residual confidence in the privileged access of the photograph to the real will
disappear243. To a certain extent, digitalization pulverizes the photographic244.
574
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apple in his mouth, another one kneeling in prayer on a football field against the
incomparable and sublime backdrop of an Alpine mountain. An almost abstract
photograph focuses on a pile of dead flies near a confession box, while a subject,
perhaps the same extravagant priest, hides behind a board. The height of excess and
pathos is an elderly man with his trousers around his ankles as he tries to fornicate
with a moss-covered wall. There is no doubt that the photographic poses of this artist
who portrays himself piously praying (his works could be understood as prayers or
sentences pronounced with incredible precision) are frankly funny. In these times of
the rhetoric of banality, at least Wurm gives one more turn of the screw of the less
is more canon and now anybody, in sixty seconds, can create a fuss with his liquid
humour251. In a time when we have accepted, perhaps too tranquilly, a destinerant, as
opposed to the ideology of the virtualization of the world, there appear many veiled
situations, traces and faces of the different, indications forcing us towards a creative
drift: as Baudrillard wrote we leave prints virus, lapsus, germs, catastrophes
everywhere, signs of the imperfection they are, like the signature of man at the heart
of this artificial world. Just as well that, in the midst of the catastrophe, we still are
left with the anecdotes and, of course, with joking about.
As much as or even more than a broom, we need a mop to make the floor minimally
presentable. I am contemplating Diagonal Composition no. 3 (2000) by Jeff Wall, a
composition which, while it might seem haphazard, is structured and transmits a
strange beauty260.
Jeff Walls photographic tableaux sediment the experience of narration. His
extraordinary allegorical compositions disclose how the story is nowadays just
something residual, a space of refuge for a residual culture261. As Jeff Wall himself
has said, The figura of the storyteller is an archaism, a social type which has lost its
function as a result of the technological transformations of literacy. It has been
relegated to the margins of modernity, and survives there as a relic of the
imagination, a nostalgic archetype, an anthropological specimen, apparently dead.
However, as Walter Benjamin has shown, such ruined figures embody essential
elements of historical memory, the memory of values excluded by capitalist progress
and seemingly forgotten by everyone. This memory recovers its potential in
moments of crisis. The crisis is the present. This recovery parallels the process in
which marginalized and oppressed groups reappropriate and re-learn their own
history. This process is in full swing and its impact is transforming standard criteria
of literacy, creating openings for a newer concept of modernist culture, one not so
unilaterally futuristic as the one still reigning in Europe and North America262.
Trauma is juxtaposed with the joke. That which we want to say has to be made
visible or, put another way, we have to write it down, like in the series Signs that say
what you want them to say and not signs that say what someone else wants you to say
(1992-1993) by Gillian Wearing. In 1996, this artist returned to photographing persons
who had already appeared previously in her work, asking them to relate, using
letters and texts the life they were leading. The subjects confessed twice, in their
writing and again in their acting before the camera, showing the ordinary madness
of the everyday. These images only truly take on meaning within the parameters
of an everyday constructed through video252.
We may be left with a form of inactive thinking, not unlike the neurotic symptom253.
The house might be full of the traces of love, though this might, as Beckett penned
in First Love, go under the name of banishment. Sentimentalism is frankly bankrupt,
especially ever since we became aware (literarily, and exemplary, in Endgame) that we
had to survive on a mound of rubble, without being able to mention the preceding
catastrophe: only remaining silent is it possible to pronounce the name of the disaster.
What remains in the space where the passions once were unfolded is the shadow and
the traces of loss. Yet it is equally true that the lover was no more than a coward,
someone who fled the scene, terrified by the horizon of the domestic. As John Le
Carr wrote in A Perfect Spy: Love is whatever you can still betray. The last act in
this abandonment could be the destruction of the house, like what Jeff Wall shows us
in his magnificent photo, The Destroyed Room from 1978. The truth is that we do not
need many explanations when we see rope untidily strewn around on the ground:
depression imposes a logic of the lack of meaning in everything. Nonetheless, the
photograph is not a police record of an act of vandalism. Rather, what looks more
like the result of terrible violence has been arranged like this, in fact, when one takes
a closer look, it seems crystal clear that it is a kind of theatrical setting, to judge from
the props by one of the walls we see through the doorway, reducing the wall to a
stage set263. The upturned drawers, the slashed mattress, the peeling walls and, the
ridiculous crowning point, the figurine of the ballerina, like the survivor of this
violence which has been treated in Jeff Walls work, as a symbolic expression (a way
ENGLISH TRANSLATION
575
of saying what cannot be said), are elements of the scene of an accident which is,
properly speaking, the uninhabitable264. A vision of uncontrolled inhospitality: the
subject finds all that belongs to it destroyed, all things are out of their classifying
places, the lovers bed torn open as if it had metaphorised the crime. At this point we
have to return to that idea of the unheimlich which, as Schelling had it, is when
everything that should remain secret and hidden is made manifest. It was Sigmund
Freud in his famous text from 1919, who associated the uncanny with the fear that an
object without life would, in some form, become animated265, but it also bears a
relationship with the panic when faced with the possibility of losing ones eyes, that
is to say, that paradoxical seeing oneself blind.
whether a thinking of the thought read in a book, the incredible mirror plays269, the
double gesture of turning the head around to look at the subject he has just passed or
the masterly story in which strange things happen: a play of scales and details that
establish a fold of one image on another, not unlike what Borges did in the field of
literature. The processes of my consciousness Michals said, are the material of my
photographs. Some of the dreamlike figures of this artist remind us of extreme
desires, whether in eroticism, in the tender and tragic story of the grandfather who
dies and the child who says goodbye at the window or in the message (perhaps
arriving from beyond a hermetic siege) which leaves the naked woman completely
broken. All the symbols speak of a poetic temporality in which the finitude does not
imply a surrender to pathos or morbid melancholy. Michals micro-narrations, in
which the meaning remains open-ended, activate a drift which contemplates,
seduces and traps like a mannerist labyrinth: a story of a man telling a story of a man
telling a story. Nonetheless, these extraordinary tangles manage to escape from the
clutches of conceptualism and its tautologies, from the surrounding theatricality
and the orthodoxy of the trauma, to propose to us, as Foucault put it, new ways of
seeing. In an interview, Michals said that he often uses the word authentic because
it is important to be authentic in a world full of impostors, of people who pose.
There is a load of people who have ho profound value. Undoubtedly, this lucid artist
can use this problematic word (in a time when the only thing that matters has lost its
value), especially with a body of work so intense and beautiful as the one he continues
working on. Coming across Michals work means experiencing, in the midst of this
age of aesthetic glaciation, a strange emotion, as if once again stories are being woven
and the tone of life was, by the minute, a prodigy of lightness and magic.
For quite some time now we have been in a bunker or crypt266, where we can find
more than an allegory or materialization of freedom, a form of indecision or, to be
more (psycho)physical, an intolerable claustrophobia 267. Virilio maintained that, in the
era of globalization, everything is gambled on two themes which are also two terms:
foreclosure (Verwefung: rejection, denegation) and exclusion or the locked-in
syndrome268.
The storyteller has a special handcrafted relationship with his material, in the same
way that the potter leaves the prints of his hands on the clay (the touch that makes
the world more sensible), watchful of the end (the death that does not always need to
be named) but concentrating on the continuity of the weave, the presence of what
casts its spell and the strange remembrance of a past that is totally fictitious.
Information and the stateless soul of the novel are not the only guilty parties for the,
almost irrevocable, eclipse of storytelling, because it is also true that in a world of
noises to exorcise a terrifying silence, there hardly exists an education for the voice or,
to put it another way, almost nobody has sufficient energy to tell their own story.
Singularity, character and, in addition, the work of art have finally been supplanted
(a polite way of describing a gesture that, properly speaking, is a throwing onto the
rubbish tip) by the dynamic of the integrated-spectacular and, of course, by a
plethora of pseudo-intellectual fashions, ranging from a deconstruction that ends up
as a theology of the negative to the para-structural or psychoanalytical vulgates that
can stand in, as could not be otherwise, for one thing and for its opposite. The selfportraits Duane Michals titled Who is Sydney Sherman? could be viewed as one of the
most effective demonstrations of sarcasm on the clichs of contemporary art: dressed
up in a grotesque blond wig he composes a series of parodical poses to which he adds
texts dismantling the (pitifully fossilized) jargon of art criticism. Words like
scatological, sublimatory, Brechtian effect or phallic subterfuge underscore a clinical
situation of interpretosis, that stance somewhere between complicity and
misunderstanding. Ranging from his fantastic portraits (Warhol shaking his head
until his features disappear, Balthus elegantly reflected in a mirror, Duchamp behind
a window as if on exhibit, Pasolini sitting in an alleyway besides some packages,
Magritte dominated by a hat that takes on life and strangely grows) to his classic
sequences, Duane Michals remains true to his myths and obsessions, working with the
small format to vindicate the intimate and passionate and, above all, to resist, in this
age of ours, the gigantism of so many images that only reveal their its own emptiness.
This artist radicalises the dimension of reading obviously based on the pleasure of
writing which in his case is almost calligraphic. The texts intensify the poetic
dimension of the photographs in which there is a kind of permanent mise en abyme,
Some of the photos that trap me do not allow me to write anything. I keep trying to
think of something about Breath on Piano (1993) by Gabriel Orozco.
Or Platform for musicians on a German farm (1975) by Kurt Benning.
Close to music, but without the sound. The imminence of a disclosure that never takes
place. The weight of the moment and the trope of emptiness270. More than a mystery
it is a riddle. In a brief passage in Poetics, dedicated to the forms of artistic diction,
Aristotle defined the enigma or riddle as follows: the essence of a riddle is to express
true facts under impossible combinations. The enigmatic contains a particular
density of metaphors, but also an impossible combination or connection, the mixture
of literal and figurative meanings271. The pathos of the hidden is connected with the
surrealist conception of the imaginary as a plane (operating table) where the radically
heterogeneous come together.
The enigma that we can find, for instance, in sexuality272.
We are enigmas to ourselves.273
Or in dreams. Freud said that, after a thorough interpretation, all dreams are
disclosed as the fulfilment of a desire, that is to say, the dream is the hallucinatory
realization of an unconscious desire274. The creation of symbols is a partial
understanding of the negative to satisfy, under the pressure of the reality principle,
all the drives and desires of the organism. In the form of an engagement, it is a partial
liberation with respect to reality, a return to a childhood paradise with its everything
576
ENGLISH TRANSLATION
is allowed and its hallucinatory realization of desires. The biological state of the
organism during sleep is in itself a partial return to the intrauterine situation of the
foetus. Unconsciously, we re-enact this state, a return to the matrix. We are naked,
we bend up our knees, lower out head, we fold in on ourselves under the sheets: we
recreate the foetal position; our organism closes out all external stimuli and
influences and, finally, our dreams, as we have seen, partially restore the realm of the
pleasure principle275. We are trapped in sleep and it takes us to the abysm of the
sublime, of tenderness, of threadbare memories of the matrix. There is no denying
that there is a labyrinthine structure or tangle that distances us from a clear vision of
what we dream; as Freud himself told us, the navel of dreams is the unknown,
something that is beyond the meshwork of the world of thought276. The
intranscendental (what we call the punctum in the encounter with photography) can
take on immense importance in dreams277. In The Interpretation of Dreams Freud
suggested, with respect to certain preliminary observations on our psyche, that we
should picture the instrument which carries out our mental functions as resembling
a compound microscope or a photographic apparatus, or something of the kind.
The secret treasure284 could have something to do with desire, with the jewel that
shines in the darkness and seduces us, like the agalma that ensures a minimum of
phantasmatic consistency for the being of the subject: the object petit a as object of
fantasy which is something more than I myself, by dint of which I perceive myself as
worthy of the desire of the Other. The original question of desire is not that which
wants to know really what it is one wants to say, but the other question that waits to
know what others want from me: What do they see in me? What am I for others?
That brings to mind the No Trespassing sign repeated in Citizen Kane, warning us
that if we go any further, we are entering into a strange realm285.
Jacques Lacan: What is a picture? in The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. Seminar Book XI,
W. W. Norton & Company, New York London, 1981, p. 106.
Photographys reputation increased, especially in Germany, where Moholy-Nagy noted, in a phrase which
virtually became a motto, The illiterates of the future will be the people who know nothing of photography
rather than those who are ignorant of the art of writing. Photography was to contribute to a universal visual
language, at a point in the near future when cameras were to become as commonplace and as readily used as
typewriters. (Ian Jeffrey: Photography, A Concise History, Thames & Hudson, 1981, pp. 111-112).
Sometimes we must make a great effort not to interpret dreams, because the very
process simply ends up destroying them. The damage that interpreted dreams can
cause is unforeseen as Elias Canetti wrote, this destruction remains hidden, but,
just think how sensitive dreams are! One cannot see any blood when the knackers
axe falls on the spiders web, but, still and all, it has destroyed it! . . . And the same
one can never be spun again. Very few people stop to think of the unique and
unrepeatable character of all dreams, because otherwise how is it possible to strip
them bare and transform them into commonplaces . . . . In Beyond the Pleasure
Principle, Freud warns us that consciousness arises in the trace of a memory, that is,
from the death instinct and the degradation of life, but the memory also has the
corporality of pleasure, leaving behind it the shadow of countless desires.
Cf. Carl G. Jung: Ain. Contribucin a los simbolismos del s-mismo, Paids, Barcelona, 1989, p. 22. Pliny
stated that painting was born when for the first time, man enclosed the shadow of a man within lines: a sign
of the absence as well as the presence, the origin that, despite everything, is distanced. The history of art is
the dialectic of this difficulty to materialize the moment of desire, see Victor I. Stoichita: A Short History of
the Shadow, Reaktion, 1997.
5
Geoffrey Batchen. Arder en deseos. La concepcin de la fotografa, Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2004, p. 121.
Cf. Roland Barthes: El efecto de realidad in El susurro del lenguaje. Ms all de la palabras y la escritura,
Paids, Barcelona, 1987, pp.
An uncertain theory of personality somehow implicit in autobiographies and self-portrait would lead
us to consider the possibility of construction not now of a personality but almost of the person itself, as if the
artist, based on experiences and omissions, were to build a public image of herself from her needs and
intentions, which is to say, as if she were to construct her own biography through artistic mechanisms within
her reach, and inverting not so much the terms of the fact as much as the order of the events: an intruder in
her own intimacy, a revealer of her own secrets, Sophie Calle exposes herself as if she were another person
who had nothing to do with herself: mechanisms of construction of the I in connection with something
previous (a model, a pole of identification, a prior I) (Manel Clot: Figuras de la identidad in Sophie Calle.
Relatos, Fundacin la Caixa, Madrid, 1996, p. 20).
9 She [Sophie Calle] decided to follow him [Henri B. a man with whom she had a brief conversation in Paris
The I that approaches the text is a plurality of distinct texts. Normally it is considered
that subjectivity is a wholeness that obstructs the text, yet this pretended wholeness
is only a layer of all the signs with which the I is made-up, in such a way that
ultimately my subjectivity possesses the generality of the stereotype282.
in which he tells her that he is going to visit Venice soon] to Italy and through the Venetian streets without
his knowledge and to document the unexpected journey he unwittingly took her on with photographs and
notes. In a work from the following year, The Hotel, Calle took a job as chambermaid in a hotel in Venice.
During the daily cleaning of the bedrooms, she photographed the personal items of their temporary
inhabitants, discovering and imagining who they might be. She opened suitcases, read diaries and
paperwork, inspected laundry and rubbish bins, systematically photographing each intrusion and making
notes that were then published and exhibited. Calles art works conflate fact and fiction, exhibitionism and
voyeurism, and performance and spectatorship. She creates scenarios that consume her, border on being out
of control, fail, remain unfinished or take unexpected turns. The importance of a script for her art was
highlighted when Calle collaborated with the writer Paul Auster. In his novel Leviathan (1992), Auster
creates a character called Maria who was based on Calle (Charlotte Cotton: The Photograph as Contemporary
Art, Thames and Hudson, London, 2004, p. 23).
Light illuminates. There are hardly any shadows left. The rest is complicated.
Are we capable of surprising ourselves today with anything? Is there any photo about
to appear like the catacombs of Paris? Nadar leads a clandestine existence. The bones
and skulls are everywhere283.
In 1855, when the Societ Francaise de Photographie was founded, Nadar made a
sarcastic drawing titled Photography applying for a place, however small, at the Exposition
of Fine Arts. The photographic apparatus, slowly and perhaps hesitantly, pulled the
bell, rang softly for them to open the doors of the temple. And that has now happened.
ENGLISH TRANSLATION
John Berger: Uses of Photography in About Looking, Vintage, reprint edition, 1992, p. 52.
10
A fiercely disperse situation, where at all costs the double negation is maintained without which there
would be no history: the seen ignores the fact that it is seen (and to ignore it, it needs to become a subject),
and its ignorance allows the voyeur to ignore himself as voyeur (Christian Metz: El significante imaginario.
Psicoanlisis y cine, Paids, Barcelona, 2001, p. 98).
577
eye was literally petrified. The Gorgons gaze, like an evil emanation, turned the victim into a statue of stone
(Pedro Azara: El ojo y la sombra. Una mirada al retrato en Occidente, Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2002, p. 81).
11
Bayard intentionally placed himself in the position which in another photograph was occupied by a
statuette of Antinoo, the beautiful young man who, according to Roman legend, was drowned while saving
the life of his lover, the emperor Adrian (Geoffrey Batchen: Arder en deseos. La concepcin de la fotografa,
Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2004, p. 163).
25
As everybody knows, primitive people fear that the camera will rob them of some part of their being. In
the memoir he published in 1900, at the end of a very long life, Nadar reports that Balzac had a similar vague
dread of being photographed. His explanation, according to Nadar, was that every body in its natural state
was made of a series of ghostly images superimposed in layers to infinity, wrapped in infinitesimal films. [ . . . ]
Man never having been able to create, that is to make something material from an apparition, from
something impalpable, or to make from nothing, an object each Daguerreian operation was therefore to
lay hold of, detach, and use up one of the layers of the body on which it focused (Susan Sontag: On
Photography, Noonday, New York, 1989, p. 158).
12 John Tagg: The Burden of Representation, Essays on Photographies and Histories, Palgrave Macmillan, 1988,
p. 34.
13
In 1839, when Daguerre made public his photographic process, what he stressed was its potential
accessibility to a wide public and its automatic nature two factors which were seen as inseparable from the
imagined objectivity of the technique. Anyone he claimed, can take the most detailed views in a few
minutes by a chemical and physical process which gives nature the ability to reproduce herself. The
ideological conception of the photograph as a direct and natural cast of reality was present from the very
beginning and, almost immediately, its appeal was exploited in portraiture (John Tagg: The Burden of
Representation, Essays on Photographies and Histories, Palgrave Macmillan, 1988, p. 41).
26
The inability to remember is itself perhaps a memory. One lived with the experience of namelessness:
there were certain elemental forces heat, cold, pain, sweetness which were recognizable. As also a few
persons. But there were no verbs and no nouns. Even the first pronoun was a growing conviction rather than
a fact, and because of this lack, memories (as distinct from a certain functioning of memory) did not exist.
Once one lived in a seamless experience of wordlessness. Wordlessness means that everything is continuous.
The later dream of an ideal language, a language which says all simultaneously, perhaps begins with the
memory of this state without memories (John Berger: And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos, Vintage,
reprint edition, 1992, pp. 29-30).
14
The magic of the miniature portrait was captured by the camera. The proximity of the daguerreotype to
the Lilliputian appearance of the miniature painting, its lower cost, greater veracity and the relative ease with
which it was executed, made it almost necessary for the average miniaturist, if he were to ensure his survival
as an artist, either to utilize the daguerreotype in his work or to go over completely to the new process
(Aaron Scharf: Art and Photography, Penguin Books, reprint edition, 1983, p. 43). In 1936, Gisle Freund
analysed, in Photography in France in the 19th Century, the rise of photography relating it with the bourgeoisie
and the production of portraits in miniature on ivory; her description of the physio-line as a link between
the portrait in miniature and the photographic take is a discovery (Walter Benjamin: Carta de Paris.
Pintura y fotografa in Sobre la fotografa, Pre-textos, Valencia, 2004, p. 78).
28
But the whole paradox of popular photography is revealed in its temporal dimension. An instant incision
into the visible world, photography provides the means of dissolving the solid and compact reality of
everyday perception into an infinity of fleeting profiles like dream images, in order to capture absolutely
unique moments of the reciprocal situation of things, to grasp, as Walter Benjamin has shown, aspects
imperceptible because they are instantaneous, of the perceived world, to arrest human gestures in the
absurdity of a present made up of pillars of salt. In fact, far from seeing specific vocation as the capturing
of critical moments in which the reassuring world is knocked off balance, ordinary practice seems
determined, contrary to all expectations, to strip photography of its power to disconcert; popular photography
eliminates accident or any appearance that dissolves the real by temporalizing it. Only ever capturing
moments which have been turned from the temporal flow by virtue of their solemnity, and only capturing
people who are fixed, immobile, in the immutability of the plane, it loses its power of corrosion (Pierre
Bourdieu: Photography: A Middle-Brow Art, Stanford University Press, reissue edition, 1996, p. 72).
15
As portraiture became more accessible and more common, the status of the human body within society
changed. Another body, beyond that defined by the daguerreotype and calotype portrait as the individual, was
produced through the invention of the carte-de-visite the collective body of the middle class. Conventional
histories suggest that photography was invented to meet the demands of a growing middle class for cheap
portraits. Marxist historians challenge this assumption, arguing that the middle class of the mid-nineteenth
century was not a coherent entity with clearly defined pre-existing needs, but rather a series of ever-changing
aggregations formed in the pursuit of common goals or as the result of shared beliefs or practices. Carte-de-visite
photography, these historians argue, was one of the practices that defined the new bourgeoisie. Moreover, it
produced images so cheap and common that they accumulated into a collective portrait of that class (John Pultz:
Photography and the Body, The Everyman Art Library, London, 1995, p. 17).
29
The synthesis of expression which was achieved through the long immobility of the model, Orlik says
of the early photographs, is the chief reason besides their simplicity why these photographs, like well drawn
or painted likenesses, exercise a more penetrating, longer-lasting effect on the observer than photographs
taken more recently. The procedure itself caused the models to live, not out of the instant, but into it
(Walter Benjamin: A Short History of Photography in Classic Essays on Photography, Leetes Island Books,
New Haven, Connecticut, 1980, p. 204).
16
Testimony from Nadar in a lawsuit, reported by Jean Prinet and Antoinette Dilasser: Nadar, Armand
Colin, Paris, 1966, pp. 115-116.
17 Cf. Rafael Argullol: Autorretrato: Refljate a ti mismo in El retrato, Galaxia Gutenberg, Crculo de
Lectores, Barcelona, 2004, pp. 43-54.
18 With the spectacular publication on daguerreotype, the work of Bayard was completely pushed to one side.
30
The photograph must be silent [ . . . ]:: this is not a question of discretion, but of music. Absolute
subjectivity is achieved only in a state, an effort, of silence (shutting your eyes is to make the image speak in
silence) (Roland Barthes: Camera Lucida, Hill and Wang, New York, 1997, pp. 53-55).
Bayard himself spoke about his misfortune with a photograph dated in 1840. He can be seen semi-naked,
reclining against a wall as if he were dead. On the back of the copy is written: The body you see here is that
of Monsieur Bayard . . . the Academy, the King and all those who have seen his images have admired them,
just like us. The admiration brought him prestige, but it did not bring him one cent. The government, who
gave so much to Daguerre, said that it could do absolutely nothing for Bayard, and the misfortunate man
decided to drown himself (Beaumont Newhall: Historia de la fotografa, Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2002, p. 25).
31
For photographers there is, finally, no difference no greater aesthetic advantage between the effort
to embellish the world and the counter-effort to rip off its mask. Even those photographers who distained
retouching their portraits a mark of honour for ambitious portrait photographers from Nadar on
tended to protect the sitter in certain ways from the cameras too revealing gaze. And one of the typical
endeavours of portrait photographers, professionally protective towards famous faces (like Garbos) which
really are ideal, is the search for real faces, generally sought among the anonymous, the poor, the socially
defenceless, the aged, the insane people different to (or powerless to protest) the cameras aggressions
(Susan Sontag: On Photography, Noonday, New York, 1989, pp. 103-104).
19 Charo Crego: Geografa de una pennsula. La representacin del rostro en la pintura, Abada, Madrid, 2004, p. 13.
20
Schopenhauer said that the inner man is an inner portrait , and the face is an expression and disclosure of
the whole character, it is in itself a fairly probable assumption, and consequently fairly safe, corroborated as
it is by the fact that people are always anxious to see anybody who has achieved fame [ . . . ] Photography [ .
. . ] offers our curiosity the most complete satisfaction.
32 Julia Kristeva: Language: The Unknown. An Initiation into linguistics, Columbia University Press, New
York, 1989, p. 315.
21 Serge Tisseron: El misterio de la cmara lcida. Fotografa e inconsciente, University of Salamanca, 2000, p. 81.
22 The same intention is demonstrated in the concern to correct ones posture, to put on ones best clothes,
the refusal to be surprised in an ordinary attitude, at everyday work. Striking a pose means respecting oneself
and demanding respect (Pierre Bourdieu: Photography : A Middle-Brow Art, Stanford University Press,
reissue edition, 1996, p. 76).
23
Cf. Pierre Bourdieu: Photography: A Middle-Brow Art, Stanford University Press, reissue edition, 1996, p. 22.
27
33 John Berger underscored how in Gricaults five portraits painted in La Salptrire, the eyes of the portrayed
look to one side, out of the corners of their eyes: not because they are looking at something in the distance or
imagining something, but because they are used to avoiding everything close to them. The close at hand provokes
a sense of vertigo because the explanations offered do not explain it. How often do we find ourselves today in
trains, car parks, lines in shopping malls with a similar look, a gaze that refuses to focus on the near at hand
(John Berger: Un hombre desgreado in El tamao de una bolsa, Taurus, Madrid, 2004, p. 187).
Roland Barthes: Camera Lucida, Hill and Wang, New York, 1997, p. 13.
24
The figures of nightmares, like the gods of vengeance, thirsty for and stained with blood, are all mixed
together in the cloudy mind of those who suffer them, with the Gorgon. Her devastating power resides in her
gaze, and in the dense tangle of serpents around her head. Anyone reckless enough to look her directly in the
34 Such would be the Photographs fate: by leading me to believe (it is true, one time out of how many?)
that I have found what Calvino calls the true total photograph, it accomplishes the unheard-of
578
ENGLISH TRANSLATION
identification of reality (that-has-been) with truth (there-she-is!); it becomes at once evidential and
exclamative; it bears the effigy to that crazy point where affect (love, compassion, grief, enthusiasm, desire)
is a guarantee of Being. It then approaches, to all intents, madness; it joins what Kristeva calls la verite folle
(Roland Barthes: Camera Lucida, Hill and Wang, New York, 1997, p. 113).
48
The air (I use this word, lacking anything better, for the expression of truth) is a kind of intractable
supplement of identity, what is given as an act of grace, stripped of any importance: the air expresses the
subject, insofar as that subject assigns itself no importance (Roland Barthes: Camera Lucida, Hill and Wang,
New York, 1997, p. 109). It is worth bearing in mind the Benjaminian definition of the aura: But What is
aura? A strange web of time and space: the unique appearance of a distance, however close at hand. (Walter
Benjamin: A Short History of Photography in Classic Essays on Photography, Leetes Island Books, New
Haven, Connecticut, 1980, p. 209).
35 The Photograph always leads the corpus I need back to the body I see; it is the absolute Particular, the
sovereign Contingency, matte and somehow stupid, the This (this photograph, and not Photography ), in
short, what Lacan calls the Tuch, the Occasion, the Encounter, the Real, in its indefatigable expression.
(Roland Barthes: Camera Lucida, Hill and Wang, New York, 1997, p. 4).
36
49 The aesthetic of collage, first pictorial, was soon applied to photography at the same time considered a
fragment of reality, a puncture of time and space explored by the avant-gardes and afterwards systematically
explored by dint of its potential for montage. Photomontage arose as an emblematic practise of the avant-gardes
between the wars, as an experimentation with the aesthetic of the fragment and shock. And it also arose as an
attempt to make photography exchangeable with painting, photography with drawing, photography with
writing (Dominique Baqu: La fotografa plstica, Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2003, p. 192).
37
The Photograph does not call up the past []. The effect it produces upon me is not to restore what has
been abolished (by time, by distance) but to attest that what I see has indeed existed. [ . . . ] photography has
something to do with resurrection: might we not say of it what the Byzantines said of the image of Christ
which impregnated St. Veronicas napkin: that it was not made by the hand of man, acheiropoietos? (Roland
Barthes: Camera Lucida, Hill and Wang, New York, 1997, p. 82).
50 Cf. Benjamin H.D. Buchloh: Procedimientos alegricos: apropiacin y montaje en el arte contemporneo
in Gloria Picazo & Jorge Ribalta (eds.): Indiferencia y singularidad en el pensamiento artstico contemporneo,
MACBA, Barcelona, 1997, p. 99.
38
Absence accepted for the occasion of the act of figuration, as right by the person portrayed. The setting
giving body to its invention is the sentimental mechanism: the image is the retention of absence, of that which
is going to leave to go abroad (Jean-Christophe Bailly: La llamada muda. Los retratos de El Fayum, Akal,
Madrid, 2001, p. 106).
51
The mobilisation of the camera (for instance, the birds eye view), the multiple and fragmented point of
view and the prolific theoretical laboratory period of the Russian constructivists hugely broadened the
potential of space in art (Steve Yates: Valor del espacio: esbozo terico sobre el arte fotogrfico a finales del
siglo XX in Steve Yates (ed.): Poticas del espacio, Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2002, p. 299).
39 Craig Owens: Posing in Beyond Recognition. Representation, Power, and Culture, University of California
Press, Berkeley, 1984, p. 215.
40
In terms of image-repertoire, the Photograph (the one I intend) represents that very subtle moment when,
to tell the truth, I am neither subject nor object but a subject who feels he is becoming an object: I then
experience a micro-version of death (of parenthesis): I am truly becoming a specter (Roland Barthes: Camera
Lucida, Hill and Wang, New York, 1997, p. 14).
Claude Lvi-Strauss: The Savage Mind, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1996, p. 17.
Boas said that mythological universes are fated to be shattered almost as soon as they are formed, so that
new worlds can be built from their fragments: Penetrating as this comment it, it nevertheless fails to take
into account that in the continual reconstruction from the same materials, it is always earlier ends that are
called upon to play the part of means: the signified changes into the signifying and vice versa (Claude LviStrauss: The Savage Mind, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1996, p. 21).
Cf. Ian Jeffrey: Photography, A Concise History, Thames & Hudson, 1981, pp. 136-142.
55
43 Walter Benjamin recalled that Eugne Atgets comment represented the streets of Paris as if they were the
Claude Lvi-Strauss: The Savage Mind, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1996, pp. 21-22.
56
In Civilization and its Discontents, Freud offers a metaphor of the unconsciousness that could equally be
applied to this practice of diversion: it refers to the capitals and drums of columns to be found built-in to some
rural buildings on the site of old ruins. The peasants took possession of them for their own use, in this way
demonstrating an insolent indifference towards old architecture. Art historians and archaeologists call these
re-usage or spolia (remains, plunder), thus designating the way in which, since a long time ago, the old
has been used as material in the physical meaning of the word to turn it into something new. We could
equally evoke the remains of the day, that is to say, the remains of the eve, extracted from their prosaic
context, and freely associated by the dreamer within unprecedented imaginary synthesis. Here, then, Desire
has returned to construct the human body according to new rhythms that follow the same detours that Freud
attributed to the fragments of dreams: Twisted, broken, recombined like floating ice (Emmanuel Guigon:
Historia del collage en Espaa, Museo de Teruel, 1995, pp. 50-51).
scenes of a crime. This observation serves the purpose of poeticising an inexpressive and non-expressionist
style, to fuse nostalgia and the cold instrumentality of the detective. Looking backward, from Benjamin to
Atget, we can observe the loss of the past through the constant alterations of the urban present as a form of
violence against the memory, that the nostalgic bohemian resists by means of solipsistic and passive acts of
acquisition. (To a large extent Baudelaires poem The Swan expresses this feeling of loss, of the imminent
disappearance of the known). I bring up this example only to posit the question of the affective character of
the documentary. Documentary photography has accumulated mountains of evidence. And nonetheless, in
this pictorial presentation of scientific and legislative reality, the genre has at once contributed a lot to the
spectacle, to exciting the retina, to voyeurism, to terror, to envy and to nostalgia; and on the other hand only
a little to the critical understanding of the world (Allan Sekula: Desmantelar la modernidad, reinventar el
documental. Notas sobre la poltica de la representacin in Jorge Ribalta (ed.): Efecto real. Debates
posmodernos sobre la fotografa, Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2004, p. 41).
57
Cf. Claude Lvi Strauss: The Savage Mind, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1996, p. 30.
58
Jean-Clarence Lambert argued that in collage there is a deliberate violence, which is the equivalent of
other unconscious forms of violence, of other violations of the forbidden: it does not intervene innocently in
the syntax and vocabulary of the world (Jean-Clarence Lambert: Prague, le collage y Hoffmeinster in
Coloquio/Artes, no. 60, Fundaco Galouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon, March 1984)
44
Greenberg thought Cartier-Bressons Works were too rigid, artificial, cold and pseudo-artistic while he
defended Atgets work which was, in his opinion, more humble in intentions: He was not after beautiful
views; he was out to capture the identity of his subject. [ . . . ] Atget could at times extract a more intensely
human interest from the signs and traces of the human presence than from that presence itself (Clement
Greenberg: The Cameras Glass Eye: Review of an Exhibition of Edward Weston in The Collected Essays
and Criticism, vol. 4, Chicago University Press, 1993, p. 184).
59
What is? How does it work? What is the technique? You take a coffee grinder and fill it with fine pearls,
you grind them, mix the powder you get with a bit of butter, let your anger out, extend the paste on the sole
of your shoes and offer this slice to the woman of your dreams. The operation must be executed with fury
and preferably in the hold of a boat with wheels which comes and goes at full speed from the Gare de lEst to
Gare Montparnasse. Then you will have made a classic collage (Georges Charbonnier: Conversacin con
Max Ernst in El monlogo del pintor, Paris, 1959).
45 Walter Benjamin: A Short History of Photography in Classic Essays on Photography, Leetes Island Books,
Claude Lvi-Strauss: The Savage Mind, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1996, pp. 16-17.
53
54
41 Walter Benjamin: A Short History of Photography in Classic Essays on Photography, Leetes Island Books,
New Haven, Connecticut, 1980, p. 210.
42
52
Pierre Bourdieu: Photography : A Middle-Brow Art, Stanford University Press, reissue edition, 1996, p. 74.
47
60
The photographs Evans took in the metro at the end of the thirties and the beginnings of the forties
were definitely clear evidence of a refined dialogue with the empirical methods of police investigation.
Evans presented himself as a flneur and at the end of his life he compared his sensibility with Baudelaires.
Though Walter Benjamin had said that it does not matter what path the flneur takes, they all lead him
to crime, Evans overlooked this final citation (Allan Sekula: El cuerpo y el archivo in Gloria Picazo &
Jorge Ribalta (eds.): Indiferencia y singularidad. La fotografa y el pensamiento contemporneo, MACBA,
Barcelona, 1997, p. 182).
ENGLISH TRANSLATION
Greenberg warned us that the writers who have tried to explain their intentions for them speak, with a
unanimity that is suspect in itself, of the need for renewed contact with reality in face of the growing
abstractness of Analytical Cubism. But the term reality, always ambiguous when used in connection with
art, has never been used more ambiguously than here. A piece of imitation-woodgrain wallpaper is not more
real under any definition, or closer to nature, than a painted simulation of it; nor is wallpaper, oilcloth,
newspaper or wood more real, or closer to nature, than paint on canvas. (Clement Greenberg: Collage
in Arte y cultura, Paids, Barcelona, 2002, p. 85).
579
symptoms, or the actual referents of the shifters. Cast shadows could also serve as the indexical signs of objects
. . . (Rosalind E. Krauss: Notes on the Index, Part 1 in The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modern
Myths, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1986, p. 198).
61 We could play at looking for secular ancestors for collage, and we would come up with more than one,
among the curiosities of tricksters, caricaturists and forgers. Modern collage does not require our attention
for what makes up this relationship which is not very much. It requires it for the arranged component, the
absolute opposite to painting. Insomuch as it represents human possibility. Because it substitutes a degraded
art with a form of expression of unknown reach and power. Because it restores old pictorial approaches with
their true meaning, stopping the artist from surrendering himself to narcissism, to art for arts sake, returning
him to magical practices which are the origin and justification of plastic visual representations, forbidden by
many religions (Louis Aragon: El desafo a la pintura in Los colages, Sntesis, Madrid, 2001, p. 47).
75 The phrase message with a code is drawn from an essay in which Roland Barthes points to the
fundamentally uncoded nature of the photographic image. What this [photographic] message specifies he
writes, is, in effect, that the relation of signified and signifier is quasi-tautological. Undoubtedly the
photograph implies a certain displacement of the scene (cropping, reduction, flattening), but this passage is
not a transformation (as an encoding must be). Here there is a loss of equivalence (proper to true sign systems)
and the imposition of a quasi-identity. Put another way, the sign of this message is no longer drawn from an
institutional reserve; it is not coded. And one is dealing with the paradox of a message without a code
(Rosalind E. Krauss: Notes on the Index, Part 2 in The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modern
Myths, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1986, p. 211).
62 Walter Benjamin: A Short History of Photography in Classic Essays on Photography, Leetes Island Books,
Freud recounted this first-person experience of the uncanny double: I was sitting alone in my wagon-lit
compartment when a more than usually violent jolt of the train swung back the door of the adjoining
washing-cabinet, and an elderly gentleman in a dressing-gown and a travelling cap came in. I assumed that
in leaving the washing-cabinet, which lay between the two compartments, he had taken the wrong direction
and come into my compartment by mistake. Jumping up with the intention of putting him right, I at once
realized to my dismay that the intruder was nothing but my own reflection in the looking-glass on the open
door. I can still recollect that I thoroughly disliked his appearance (Sigmund Freud: Lo siniestro prefacing
E.T.A. Hoffmann: El hombre de arena, Jos de Olaeta, Barcelona, 1991, p. 32).
64
John Berger: Cun veloz se puede ir? in Siempre bienvenidos, Huerga & Fierro, Madrid, 2004, p. 244.
65
Cf. Roland Barthes: Camera Lucida, Hill and Wang, New York, 1997, p. 27.
66
67
Roland Barthes: Camera Lucida, Hill and Wang, New York, 1997, p. 90.
76 De lindice lindex, cest--dire dans cette frange dinterfrence qui la fois trouble la photographie et
explique la trouble quelle instaure, cest--dire encore dans ce pas qui va de la photographie au muse, se
trament depuis plus dun sicle et demi la plupart des questions qui agitent, construisent ou dconstruisent la
production de lart. Appareil photographique, appareil musal revoient lun lautre comme en miroir
(Daniel Soutif: De lindice a lindex ou de la photographie au muse in Les Cahiers du Muse National dArt
Moderne, no. 35, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 1991, p. 95).
77 It sometimes seems to me that the history of modern art can be read as the history of traditional art turned
back to front, like a film projected backwards: a regressive and systematic dismantling of the mechanisms
invented through the centuries in order to make the pictorial representations of the painful triumph of
Christianity and the tales of national glory convincing. Transparent surfaces were thus filled with lumps of
paint, spaces were flattened out, perspective became arbitrary, drawing no longer concerned itself with
reflecting the real outline of figures, shading was discarded in favour of areas of saturated tones that
disregarded the edges of forms and forms themselves stopped being representative of what the eye actually
saw of perceptual reality. The monochromatic canvas is the final stage of this collective procedure of
depictorialisation until someone came up with the idea of physically attacking the canvas with a knife
(Arthur C. Danto: Abstraccin in La Madonna del futuro. Ensayos en un mundo del arte plural, Paids,
Barcelona, 2003, p. 235).
68
See in this regard, Regis Durand: El tiempo de la imagen. Ensayo sobre las condiciones de una historia de las
formas fotogrficas, University of Salamanca, 1999, p. 71.
69 In an essay titled Rhetoric of the Image dating from 1964, the French critic Roland Barthes described
photography as a perverse fold of denotation within connotation, like a world of meaning internally torn between
culture and nature. In his search for a semiology of the photographic image (and with it an ontology of the
process of signification), Barthes was brought up against the paradox . . . of a message without a code
(Geoffrey Batchen: Arder en deseos. La concepcin de la fotografa, Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2004, p. 193).
78 Whatever the abstract design developed [by Lissitzky, Moholy-Nagy, Man Ray, etc.], the transparency
inherent to photography always ended up revealing the game: so many cut and folded pieces of paper, so
many iron filings scattered on glass, so many shiny balls in the air. Though vision possesses a syntax of
abstract relations that depend on conditions of integrity, symmetry, continuity and limit, and painting can
translate this syntax into a language of form, photography seems to be what resists language, given that it
is, in Roland Barthes words, an instance of nothing to say. The photographic mark, Barthes said, is the
empty sign, the sign whose meaning is articulated through a non-syntactic or semantic system; the sign that
only designates a thing in appearance and influences the gesture of the child pointing his finger at something
and saying: that, there it is, lo! [ . . . ] but says nothing else; the photograph cannot be transformed (spoken)
philosophically, it is wholly ballasted by the contingency of which it is a weightless, transparent envelope
(Rosalind Krauss: Fotografa y abstraccin in Jorge Ribalta (ed.): Efecto real. Debates posmodernos sobre
fotografa, Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2004, p. 232).
70 For above all, and in the first place, this apparent opposition (studium/punctum) does not forbid but, on the
contrary, facilitates a certain composition between the two concepts. What is to be heard in composition?
Two things that compose together. First, separated by an insuperable limit, the two concepts compromise
with each other. They compose together, the one with the other, and we will later recognize in this a
metonymic operation; the subtle beyond of the punctum, the uncoded beyond, composes with the always
coded of the studium. It belongs to it without belonging to it and is unlocatable within it; it is never inscribed
in the homogeneous objectivity of the framed space but instead inhabits or, rather, haunts it: it is an addition
[supplment]: it is what I add to the photograph and what is none the less already there . . . Neither life nor
death, but the haunting of the one by the other . . . Ghosts: the concept of the other in the same, the punctum
in the studium, the completely other, dead, living in me. This concept of the photograph photographs every
conceptual opposition; it captures a relationship of haunting that is perhaps constitutive of every logic
(Jacques Derrida: The Deaths of Roland Barthes in The Work of Mourning, University of Chicago Press,
2003, pp. 41-42).
79
It is worth remembering that an object is not something simple, not something that can be conquered if
it has not been previously lost: an object is always a reconquest, only if he recovers a place that has first been
disinhabited can man reach what is inappropriately called his own totality (Jacques Lacan: Ensayo de una
lgica de caucho in La Relacin de Objeto. El Seminario 4, Paids, Barcelona, 1994, pp. 373-374).
71
[] the detail never functions as the sublimatory metonymy of a possible totality: given that, precisely,
something related with the loss of totality itself is in play. With a renouncing of this totality, which we suspect,
is a feeling of disillusionment with the world (Dominique Baqu: La fotografa plstica, Gustavo Gili,
Barcelona, 2003, p. 235).
81 Cf. Jacques Lacan: Tuch and Automaton in The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. Seminar
Book XI, W. W. Norton & Company, New York London, 1981, pp. 53-64.
72
Eastman originated not only a camera but also a radical reconception of the boundaries of photographic
practice, and an industrial system and machinery for producing standardised materials in sufficient
quantities to support it. With the slogan You Press the Button and We Do the Rest, the Kodak brought
photography to millions through a fully industrialised process of production. Instead of going to a
professional portraitist, people without training or skill now took pictures of themselves and kept the
intimate, informal or ill-composed results in family albums (John Tagg: The Burden of Representation, Essays
on Photographies and Histories, Palgrave Macmillan, 1988, p. 54).
73
Roland Barthes: Camera Lucida, Hill and Wang, New York, 1997, p. 4.
80
82
Rosalind Krauss: Fotografa y abstraccin in Jorge Ribalta (ed.): Efecto real. Debates posmodernos sobre
fotografa, Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2004, p. 232.
83 Andr Bazin: The Ontology of the Photographic Image in Classic Essays on Photography, Leetes Island
Books, New Haven, Connecticut, 1980, p. 242.
84 Ernst Jnger: ber den Schmerz cited from the Spanish translation published in Revista de Occidente, no.
127, December 1991, p. 176.
Philippe Dubois: El acto fotogrfico. De la Representacin a la Recepcin, Paids, Barcelona, 1994, p. 51.
85
Giorgio Agamben: Estancias. La palabra y el fantasma en la cultura occidental, Pre-textos, Valencia, 1995, p. 72.
74
As distinct from symbols, indexes establish their meaning along the axis of a physical relationship to their
referents. They are marks or traces of a particular cause, and that cause is the thing to which they refer, the
object they signify. Into the category of the index, we would place physical traces (like footprints), medical
580
86
Cf. Christian Metz: El significante imaginario. Psicoanlisis y cine, Paids, Barcelona, 2001, p. 82.
87
Photography, similarly to the fetish, is the result of a Gaze that has isolated, frozen, instantaneously and
ENGLISH TRANSLATION
for ever, a fragment of the space-time continuum (Victor Burgin: Photography, Phantasy, Function in
Thinking Photography, Macmillan, London, 1982, p. 190).
88
103
[ . . . ] the writer, Champfleury, for a time the leading advocate of Realism, defended that school against
attacks made during the 1853 Salon. He took issue with any criticism that automatically attached the label
daguerreotype to any work of art or literature which was executed with a high degree of truthfulness. He
described an artist whose excellent studies from nature were to no good purpose because, in his studio, he
used them to paint a finished, idealized landscape : if that man had reproduced nature in his pictures, such
as he had reproduced it in his sketches, he could certainly have become a painter. The daguerreotype was a
machine, insisted Champfleury; the artist is not nor could he be. The reproduction of nature by man will
never be a reproduction or an imitation, it will always be an interpretation. [ . . . ] More detached, less
passionately involved than either Champfleury or Duranty, he [Proudhon] not only countered the calumny
of the daguerreotype label in respect of Courbets paintings, but he also insisted that photography itself was
capable of expressing the Ideal. It was impossible, he declared, for either painters or photographers not to
interpret their subjects, not to idealize them each according to his predilections (Aaron Scharf: Art and
Photography, Penguin Books, reprint edition, 1983, pp. 137-138).
89
[ . . . ] the fundamental paradox of the passion for the Real: it culminates in its apparent opposite, in a
theatrical spectacle from the Stalinist show trials to spectacular terrorist acts (Slavoj Zizek: Welcome to the
desert of the real!, Verso, London, 2002, p. 9).
90
The spectacle of the world, in this sense, appears to us as all-seeing. This is the phantasy to be found in
the Platonic perspective of an absolute being to whom is transferred the quality of being all-seeing. At the
very level of the phenomenal experience of contemplation, this all-seeing aspect is to be found in the
satisfaction of a woman who knows that she is being looked at, on condition that one does not show her that
one knows that she knows. The world is all-seeing, but it is not exhibitionistic it does not provoke our gaze.
When it begins to provoke it, the feeling of strangeness begins too (Jacques Lacan: The Split Between the
Eye and the Gaze in The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. Seminar Book XI, W. W. Norton &
Company, New York London, 1981, p. 75).
104
Yet it is precisely there, in emotions, where the difficulty of language is rooted; it is not easy to express an
emotion. [ . . . ] Any sensation, if we want to respect its vivacity and acuity, leads to aphasia (Roland Barthes:
One Always Fails in Speaking of What One Loves in The Rustle of Language, University of California Press,
1989). Perhaps this is why, because we have no words, we recur to images. This could be their immense value.
91
Joan Fontcuberta: Revisitar las historias de la fotografa in Joan Fontcuberta (ed.): Fotografa. Crisis de
historia, Actar, Barcelona, 2002, p. 11.
105
92
Neither Benjamins spark of chance nor Barthess third meaning would guarantee photographys
place in the museum. The connoisseur needed for this job is the old-fashioned art historian with his
chemical analyses and, more important, his stylistic analyses. To authenticate photography requires all the
machinery of art history and museology, with a few additions and more than a few sleights of hand. To begin,
there is, of course, the incontestible rarity of age, the vintage print. Certain techniques, paper types, and
chemicals have passed out of use, and thus the age of a print can easily be established. (Douglas Crimp: The
Photographic Activity of Postmodernism in On the Museums Ruins, The MIT Press, Cambridge,
Massachusetts, 1993, p. 115).
Ian Jeffrey: Photography, A Concise History, Thames & Hudson, 1981, p. 159.
106
During the second half of the 20th century the judgement of history has been abandoned by all except
the underprivileged and dispossessed. The industrialized, developed world, terrified of the past, blind to
the future, lives within an opportunism which has emptied the principle of justice of all credibility. Such
opportunism turns everything nature, history, suffering, other people, catastrophes, sport, sex, politics
into spectacle. And the implement used to do this until the act become so habitual that the conditioned
imagination may do it alone is the camera (John Berger: Uses of Photography in About Looking,
Vintage, reprint edition, 1992, p. 58).
93 Christopher Phillips has made a meticulous study of the conceptions on the photographic that have been
developed at the MoMA by persons like Newhall, Steichen, Szarkowski and Peter Galassi, in El tribunal de
la fotografa in Glria Picazo & Jorge Ribalta (eds.): Indiferencia y singularidad. La fotografa en el pensamiento
artstico contemporneo, MACBA, Barcelona, 1997, pp. 59-98.
107 Martha Rosler: Dentro, alrededor y otras reflexiones. Sobre la fotografa documental in Jorge Ribalta
(ed.): Efecto real. Debates posmodernos sobre fotografa, Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2004, p. 93.
94
The cinema and photography were, naturally, inseparable from the technologies of domination and
spectacle from the ends of the 19th and 20th centuries. Paradoxically, the growing hegemony of these two
medium helps to recreate the myths of vision as something bodiless, truthful and realist. Nonetheless,
though the cinema and photography seem to reincarnate the camera obscura, it was no more than a mirage
of a series of transparent relations that modernism had already destroyed (Jonathan Crary: Modernizacin
de la visin in Steve Yates (ed.): Poticas del espacio, Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2002, p. 145).
109
95 See in this regard, John Tagg: Evidence, Truth and Order: Photographic Records and the Growth of the
State and A Means of Surveillance: The Photograph as Evidence in Law in The Burden of Representation,
Essays on Photographies and Histories, Palgrave Macmillan, 1988, p. 54, pp. 60-65 & 66-102.
112 Cf. Anne von der Heiden: Consumatum Est? Historial clnico, de Boris Mikhailov in Boris Mikhailov.
Una retrospectiva, Palau de la Virreina, Electa, Barcelona, 2004, p. 150.
108 Boris Mikhailov cited in Ekaterina Degot: Disertacin inacabada: la fenomenologa del socialismo in
Boris Mikhailov. Una retrospectiva, Palau de la Virreina, Electa, Barcelona, 2004, p. 92.
Installing and promoting order means performing the job of exclusion directly, by enforcing a special
regime upon those meant to be excluded, excluding them by subordinating them to that special regime
(Zygmunt Bauman: Work, Consumism and the New Poor, Open University Press, 2nd edition, 2004, p. 85).
110
113 The quiet passion of Barthess reassertion of a retrospective photographic realism, whose unconscious
signified must always be the presence of death, has to be read against the death of his own mother, his
reawakened sense of unsupportable loss, and his search for a just image and not just an image of her. His
demand for realism is a demand, if not to have her back, then to know she was here: the consolation of a truth
in the past which cannot be questioned. (John Tagg: The Burden of Representation, Essays on Photographies
and Histories, Palgrave Macmillan, 1988, p. 1).
96 Cf. Allan Sekula: El cuerpo y el archivo in Gloria Picazo & Jorge Ribalta (eds.): Indiferencia y singularidad.
Ian Jeffrey: text in Joan Fontcuberta (ed.): Fotografa. Crisis de historia, Actar, Barcelona, 2002, p. 20.
98
Jacques Derrida: Archive Fever. A Freudian Impression, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and
London, 1996, p. 19.
114
Death, both the word and the event, is a photograph that photographs itself a photograph that comes
as the suspension of reality and its referents. As Benjamin suggests in Central Park, the photograph, like
the souvenir, is the corpse of an experience. A photograph therefore speaks as death, as the trace of what
passes into history. I, the photograph, the spaced out limit between life and death, am death. Yet, speaking as
death, photography can neither be death nor itself. At once dead and alive, it opens the possibility of our being
in time (Eduardo Cadava: Death in Words of Light: Theses on the Photography of History, Princeton
University Press, 1998, p. 128).
99
Photography transforms the world into a museum, into collections of specimens, of samples. It
geometrises, equalises, classifies. To a certain degree, it cartographs, and, as a consequence, transforms the site
into a non-site (to return to the distinction Smithson made in another context) (Rgis Durand: El tiempo de
la imagen. Ensayo sobre las condiciones de una historia de las formas fotogrficas, University of Salamanca, 1999,
p. 103).
100
Allan Sekula said that the photograph is as essential in the archiving process as the model of the archive
is for photograph. See Allan Sekula: Reading an Archive in Brian Wallis (ed.): Blasted Allegories, New
Museum, New York, 1987.
115 In 1865, young Lewis Payne tried to assassinate Secretary of State W. H. Seward. Alexander Gardner
photographed him in his cell, where he was waiting to be hanged. The photograph is handsome, as is the boy:
that is the studium. But the punctum is: he is going to die. I read at the same time: This will be and this has been;
I observe with horror an anterior future of which death is the stake. By giving me the absolute past of the
pose (aorist), the photograph tells me death in the future. What pricks me is the discovery of this equivalence.
In front of the photograph of my mother as a child, I tell myself: she is going to die: I shudder, like
Winnicotts psychotic patient, over a catastrophe which has already occurred. Whether or not the subject is
already dead, every photograph is this catastrophe (Roland Barthes: Camera Lucida, Hill and Wang, New
101 Nestor Garca Canclini: Fotografa e ideologa: sus lugares comunes in Hecho en Latinoamrica, Segundo
Coloquio Latinoamericano de Fotografa, Mexico D.F., INBA, FONAPAS, 1981, p. 19. Jos Antonio
Navarrete suggested developing the investigation put forward by Canclini in Adis, Mr. Newhall in Joan
Fontcuberta (ed.): Fotografa. Crisis de historia, Actar, Barcelona, 2002, pp. 59-73.
102
Gisle Freund: La fotografa como documento social, Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 1993, p. 28.
ENGLISH TRANSLATION
Cf. Pierre Bourdieu: Efectos de lugar in La miseria del mundo, Akal, Madrid, 1999, p. 124.
111 Erich Kstner cited by Walter Benjamin: The Author as Producer in Reflections, Schocken, 1986, p. 232.
581
York, 1997, p. 96). The real of photography in the measure that it is under the sign of the past, is under the
sign both of the lost encounter as well as death. By giving me the absolute past of the pose (aorist), the
photograph tells me death in the future. I shudder, writes Barthes, like Winnicotts psychotic patient, over
a catastrophe which has already occurred. Whether or not the subject is already dead, every photograph is this
catastrophe. Like the tuch, the punctum makes the real both what I lost and what I am therefore forced to
reproduce from then on by repetition. The subjective components of this photographic punctum that Barthes
unfolds are associated to the psychoanalytic vocabulary of a past that returns in the future: the partial object,
the uncanny, compulsive repetition (Rosalind Krauss: Fotografa y abstraccin in Jorge Ribalta (ed.):
Efecto real. Debates posmodernos sobre fotografa, Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2004, p. 233).
125 When, in the days immediately following the attacks on New York, Washington and Pittsburgh, the
German composer Karl Heinz Stockhausen declared that the attack against the Twin Towers had been the first
great work of art of the 21st century, the right-thinking reactions were not long in appearing. Unreserved
condemnation, accusations of frivolousness when not of complacency with the terrorists, of contempt for the
victims, all words seemed little to condemn without trying to understand the words of the artist. But
Stockhausen was not the only one to think the same thing. Iaki balos recalled how he watched the events of
9-11 glued to the television in a hotel in Lima together with a group of famous architects and their reaction to
the flash of the images (Baudrillard dixit) before their astonished eyes: somebody dared speak about the
powerful visual attraction of the horror and we agreed that what we were seeing was the very incarnation of
the contemporary sublime, a spectacle which in antiquity only people like Nero had allowed themselves, and
that now was being served up democratically and live to all the citizens in the global village (Santos
Zunzunegui: Tanatorios de la visin in Brumaria, no. 2, Salamanca, 2003, pp. 240-242).
116
With the pretended naivety (or sentimentalism) of the memorialist, Boltanski imitated the massacres of
the Second World War. Autobiographical fiction transcended a too narrow personal mythology and
illustrated the ambiguous relations between the archive and destruction, memory and denial. In his preface
to Nathalie Sarrautes Portrait of an Unknown Man in 1947, Sartre imagined a type of redemption for
individual solitude through the commonplace: This beautiful word has several meanings: it designates, to
be sure, the most overused thoughts but the thing is that these thoughts have become a meeting place of the
community. Everyone recognizes himself in them, and finds the others in them. The commonplace is
everyones and it belongs to me; it belongs in me to everyone; it is the presence of everyone in me. It is, in its
essence, generality; in order for me to appropriate it, an act is needed: an act through which I divest myself of
my particularity in order to join the general, to become generality. Not similar to everyone, but, precisely, the
incarnation of everyone. Through this eminently social joining, I identify myself with all the others in the
non-distinctness of the universal. Since Boltanski it has been impossible to believe in this paradoxical
constitution of the community, this permanence of the universal, even when hundreds of US photographers
still seem to cling on to this belief (Jean-Francois Chevrier/James Lingwood: Otra objetividad in Jorge
Ribalta (ed.): Efecto real. Debates posmodernos sobre fotografa, Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2004, pp. 254-255).
117
Cf. Dominique Baqu: La fotografa plstica, Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2003, p. 228.
118
126 And was not the attack on the World Trade Center with regard to Hollywood catastrophe movies like
snuff pornography versus ordinary sado-masochistic porno movies? This is the element of truth in KarlHeinz Stockhausens provocative statement that the planes hitting the WTC towers was the ultimate work
of art: we can perceive the collapse of the WTC towers as the climatic conclusion of twentieth-century arts
passion for the Real the terrorist themselves did not do it primarily to provoke real material damage
but for the spectacular effect of it (Slavoj Zizek: Welcome to the desert of the real!, Verso, London, 2002, p. 11).
127
As sordid as the fight about sawdust or sand is, the difference is decisive for the residual plot, the
transition from a minimum to nothing. Beckett can claim for himself what Benjamin praised in Baudelaire,
the ability to express something extreme with extreme discretion, the routine consolation that things could
be worse becomes a condemnation. In the realm between life and death, where even pain is no longer
possible, the difference between sawdust and sand means everything. Sawdust, wretched by-product of the
world of things, is now in great demand; its removal becomes an intensification of the life-long death
penalty. (Theodor W. Adorno: Trying to Understand Endgame in The Adorno Reader, Blackwell
Publishers, 2000, p. 342).
128
Jacques Derrida in Giovanna Borradori: Philosophy in a Time of Terror. Dialogues with Jrgen Habermas
and Jacques Derrida, University of Chicago Press, 2004, p. 97.
119
Vincent Lavoie: El instante de la historia in Joan Fontcuberta (ed.): Fotografa. Crisis de la historia, Actar,
Barcelona, 2002, p. 1995.
129
That stillness is the order which Clov supposedly loves and which he defines as the purpose of his
functions: CLOV a world where all would be silent and still and each thing in its last place, under the
last dust. To be sure, the Old Testament saying you shall become dust (Steub) again is translated here into
dirt (Dreck). (Theodor W. Adorno: Trying to Understand Endgame in The Adorno Reader, Blackwell
Publishers, 2000, p. 349).
120
The success of subject paintings of the Crimean campaign, like those of Augustus Egg and Thomas
Barker, was largely due to their use of Fentons photographs. The necessary pictorial authentification of
public figures, social events and social catastrophes was inevitably argumented by the camera. In conjunction
with the growth of a popular Press the demand for such pictures was considerably increased (Aaron Scharf:
Art and Photography, Penguin Books, reprint edition, 1983, p. 84).
130 Paul Virilio used this question to begin developing his reflections in Unknown Quantity, Thames &
Hudson, Fondation Cartier pour lart Contemporain, 2002, p. 6.
121
But pity, far from being the natural twin of fear in the dramas of catastrophic misfortune, seems diluted
distracted by fear, while fear (dread, terror) usually manages to swamp pity. Leonardo is suggesting that
the artists gaze be, literally, pitiless. The image should appal and in that terribilit lies a terrible kind of
beauty (Susan Sontag: Regarding the Pain of Others, Hamish Hamilton, London, 2003, p. 67).
131
What better example of a generalized catastrophe than the disintegration of a great empire like that of
Alexander the Great! But in a theme like that of humanity itself, one cannot see more than the surface of
things. Heraclitus said: You could not discover the limits of the soul although you were to travel all paths:
such is the depth of its form (Thom cited in Alexander Woodcock & Monte Davis: Teora de las catstrofes,
Ctedra, Madrid, 1994, p. 161).
122 Unquestionably, the unconscious plays dirty tricks, and so, when you are speaking, out can come a word
that is not what you wanted to say, transforming the subject into place of passage for something that has
decided to come out at any price: We call this a lapsus; a word coming from the Latin for falling,
slipping. The word falls like a piece of meat that drops from your mouth, like a drop of milk that dribbles
from your lips when you drink too quickly. You miss your shot. This is what we call a Freudian slip:
missing a step, tripping on the pavement, forgetting your wrap. All this happens through you, you are not
thinking about it, they are just silly things. Silly things on which psychoanalysis is constructed. And the
subject is not I nor You nor He. It is the appearance of the unconscious (Catherine Clment: Vidas y
leyendas de Jacques Lacan, Anagrama, Barcelona, 1981, pp. 31-32).
132
There is beauty in ruins. To acknowledge the beauty of photographs of the World Trade Center ruins in
the months following the attack seems frivolous, sacrilegious. The most people dared say was that the
photographs were surreal, a hectic euphemism behind which the disgraced notion of beauty cowered. But
they were beautiful, many of them by veteran photographers such as Gilles Peress, Susan Meiselas and Joel
Meyorowitz, among others (Susan Sontag: Regarding the Pain of Others, Hamish Hamilton, London, 2003,
pp. 67-68).
123
Archaic and forever puerile, terribly childish, these masculine phantasms were in fact fed by an entire
technocinematographic culture, and not only the genre of science fiction. Which is obviously not enough,
indeed quite the contrary, to make the September 11 attack a work of art, as Stockhausen had the very bad
taste to do in order to lay claim, through this cheap provocation, to a pittance of originality. (Jacques Derrida
in Giovanna Borradori: Philosophy in a Time of Terror. Dialogues with Jrgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida,
University of Chicago Press, 2004, p. 187).
133 Chomsky claimed that if we reviewed hundreds of years of history we would see how imperialist countries
have been basically invulnerable: Loads of atrocities are committed, but always somewhere else (Noam
Chomsky: Poder y terror. Reflexiones posteriores al 11/09/2001, RBA, Barcelona, 2003, p. 14).
134 Theodor W. Adorno: Trying to Understand Endgame in The Adorno Reader, Blackwell Publishers, 2000, p. 290.
135 A home is a place where everything can go wrong (David Lynch in Chris Rodley: David Lynch por David
Lynch, Alba, Barcelona, p. 357).
124 Whatever one thinks of the aesthetic quality, the Twin Towers were an absolute performance, and their
destruction is also an absolute performance. Nonetheless, that does not justify Stockhausens exaltation of
September 11 as the most sublime work of art. Why should an exceptional event be a work of art? Aesthetic
recuperation is as hateful as moral or political recuperation especially when the event is so singular
precisely because it is beyond aesthetics and morals (Jean Baudrillard: Rquiem por las Twin Towers in
Power Inferno, Arena, Madrid, 2003, pp. 37-38).
136 A Klee painting named Angelus Novus shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away
from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread.
This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned towards the past. Where we perceive a change
of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of
his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the death, and make whole what has been smashed. But a
582
ENGLISH TRANSLATION
storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer
close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of
debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress. (Walter Benjamin: Theses on the
Philosophy of History in Illuminations, Schocken, 1969, pp. 257-258).
148
Leo Steinberg: The Flatbed Picture Plane in Art in Theory 1900-1990, An Anthology of Changing ideas,
eds. Charles Harrison and Paul Wood, Blackwell, Oxford, 1992, pp. 951-952.
149
The Open Door is a stage waiting to be peopled. The lantern awaits darkness, the broom a user, and the
doorway an occupant. Fox Talbot, hampered by his medium, is not at liberty to show his story through to its
conclusion. Instead he signifies absences, and indicates just how those absences are to be completed in
imagination. Such significant and suggestive elements are staples in photography, both because they extend
the possible meanings of pictures, and because they restrict and guide interpretation (Ian Jeffrey:
Photography, A Concise History, Thames & Hudson, 1981, pp. 20-21). See also Daniel Soutif: De lindice a
lindex ou de la photographie au muse in Les Cahiers du Muse National dart Moderne, no. 35, Centre
Georges Pompidou, Paris, 1991, p. 73.
137 It is just possible that photography is the prophecy of the human memory yet to be socially and politically
achieved. Such a memory would encompass any image of the past, however tragic, however guilty, within its
own continuity. The distinction between the private and public uses of photography would be transcended.
The Family of Man would exist (John Berger: Uses of Photography in About Looking, Vintage, reprint
edition, 1992, p. 61).
138 Man Ray, an American photographer and painter who worked in Paris from 1921 onwards, also thought
that much depended on his art, and he too wrote of his pictures as having a large social role. He explained himself
in a brief statement, The Age of Light, published in 1934 as a foreword to Photographs by Man Ray 1920 Paris
1934. He was faced with the need to justify such individualistic work as his own in an era preoccupied with the
problem of the perpetuation of a race or class and the destruction of its enemies. His own pictures, of strikingly
lit close-ups and fragments, glowing nudes, dreaming faces and images of shadows and light traces, had to do,
he claimed, with the lyrical expression of a common desire. His own particular emotions and desires, lyrically
expressed in photographs, contributed to the discovery of universal qualities in mankind, and challenged the
divisiveness inherent in ideas of race and class. Man Ray was a Surrealist and a believer in the fundamental
rectitude of the emotions, as against the constraining and belittling power of social convention (Ian Jeffrey:
Photography, A Concise History, Thames & Hudson, 1981, p. 114).
150
L.B. Alberti: De Pictura, cited in Omar Calabrese: Naturaleza muerta in Cmo se lee una obra de arte,
Ctedra, Madrid, 1993, p. 21.
Roland Barthes: Camera Lucida, Hill and Wang, New York, 1997, p. 87.
155
Grard Wajcman: El objeto del siglo, Amorrortu, Buenos Aires, 2001, p. 16.
In contrast to George Groszs drawings, which summed up the spirit and variety of social types in
Weimar Germany through caricature, Sanders archetype pictures (as he called them) imply a pseudoscientific neutrality similar to that claimed by the covertly partisan typological sciences that sprang up in the
nineteenth century like phrenology, criminology, psychiatry, and eugenics (Susan Sontag: On Photography,
Noonday, New York, 1989, p. 59).
Rosalind E. Krauss: Notes on the Index, Part 1 in The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modern
Myths, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1986, p. 203. While Ribemont-Dessaignes called
rayographs dream objects, Man Ray himself said that they had to do with the memory, because they invoke
a more or less clear memory of some event, like the imperturbable ashes of an object consumed by the
flames.
157 Overnight, works like those of Sander can grow into unsuspected actuality. Power shifts, such as we face,
generally allow the education and sharpening of the physiognomic conception into a vital necessity. One may
come from the right or from the left he will have to get used to being viewed according to where he comes
from. One will have to see others the same way. Sanders work is more than a book of pictures: it is a book
of exercises (Walter Benjamin: A Short History of Photography in Classic Essays on Photography, Leetes
Island Books, New Haven, Connecticut, 1980, p. 211).
141 Si lair devient le lieu des images leur porte empreinte, leur mdium, leur subjectile par excellence-
, alors le pigment sera pollen ou poussire, et la touche sera souffl ou aura (Georges Didi-Huberman: Gene
du non-lieu. Air, poussire, empreinte, hantise, Minuit, Paris, 2001, p. 81).
Photo type prints etc. infralight (Marcel Duchamp: Notas, Tecnos, Madrid, 1989, p. 25).
154
156
140
Gilles Deleuze: La imagen-tiempo. Estudios sobre cine, vol. 2, Paids, Barcelona, 1987, p. 31.
John Berger: Cmo aparecen las cosas?, o Carta abierta a Marisa in El Bodegn, Galaxia Gutenberg,
Crculo de Lectores, Barcelona, 2000, p. 61.
Man Ray: text published in Paris Soir, 26 March 1926, reproduced in Revista de Occidente, no. 127,
December, 1991, p. 169.
143
Omar Calabrese: Naturaleza muerta in Cmo se lee una obra de arte, Ctedra, Madrid, 1993, p. 21.
152
153
139
142
151
158
John Berger: The Suit and the Photograph in About Looking, Vintage, reprint edition, 1992, Hermann
Blume, Madrid, 1987, p. 31.
144 As Philippe Dubois claimed, photography and Marcel Duchamp are the constant references and starting
points for the History of Contemporary Art (cf. Philippe Dubois: El acto fotogrfico. De la Representacin a la
Recepcin, Paids, Barcelona, 1994, pp. 105-107) while also equally crucial is Rosalind Krauss essay Notes
of the Index in The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modern Myths, The MIT Press, Cambridge,
Massachusetts, 1986, pp. 196-219.
159 Probably his best known is of three young countrymen photographed on a country track whilst going to
a dance in the Westerwald area in 1914. It is as intriguing as anything by him. The three youths wear dark
suits crumpled at the ankles, white collars and flat-crowned hats, and carry walking-sticks. They seem to
have paused, but only momentarily, to present themselves to the camera. Although each is similarly dressed,
each is a quite distinct character. The leader of the group looks back severely at Sander and his camera. At
his right hand stands someone who might be a more urbane brother, thoroughly at ease in expression and
gesture. The third, a little detached from the other two, is altogether more raffish. Everything sets him apart:
a curl of hair under the brim of an angled hat, a cigarette, a crumpled jacket. The picture is immensely
suggestive a starting point for a novel rather than a sociological illustration (Ian Jeffrey: Photography, A
Concise History, Thames & Hudson, 1981, p. 132).
145 The principle of neutrality begun by the Museum, and which Duchamp would call the beauty of
indifference will develop outside the photographic field. In this colonisation of experience and of life,
photography carries out the colonial designs of art as extensive appropriation of the real (Juan Luis Moraza:
Templo porttil. Tiempo fuego in Papel alpha. Cuadernos de fotografa, no. 2, 1996, p. 125).
146
The accumulation of dust is a kind of physical index for the passage of time. Dust Breeding (Elevage de
poussire) Duchamp calls it, in the photograph of the works surface that Man Ray took and Duchamp
included in the notes for the Large Glass. The signatures of both men appear along the bottom of the photo
(Rosalind E. Krauss: Notes on the Index, Part 1 in The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modern
Myths, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1986, p. 203).
160
161
At a street corner Karl saw a placard with the following announcement: The Oklahoma Theatre
will engage members for its company today at Clayton race-course from six oclock in the morning until
midnight. The great Theatre of Oklahoma calls you! Today only and never again! If you miss your
chance now you miss it for ever! If you think of your future you are one of us! Everyone is welcome! If
you want to be an artist, join our company! Our Theatre can find employment for everyone, a place for
everyone! If you decide on an engagement we congratulate you here and now! But hurry, so that you get
in before midnight! At twelve oclock the doors will be shut and never opened again! Down with all those
who do not believe in us! Up, and to Clayton! A great many people were certainly standing before the
placard, but it did not seem to find much approval. There were so many placards; nobody believed in
them any longer. And this placard was still more improbable than usual. Above all, it failed in an essential
particular, it did not mention payment. If the payment were worth mentioning at all, the placard would
certainly have mentioned it; that most attractive of all arguments would not have been forgotten. No one
wanted to be an artist, but every man wanted to be paid for his labours. (Franz Kafka: Amerika,
Schocken, 1996, p. 272).
147
In Paul Pouvreau, with a more accentuated jesting, we have buckets and dustpans, brooms and brushes
in Escenas de . . . which do not lend themselves to anything sublime given that we all know that one never
defeats dust . . . Having said that, echoing Man Rays famous photo titled levage de poussire from 1920
where he captured the dust settled on Marcel Duchamps Large Glass, Paul Pouvreau meticulously deposits
on a cement or linoleum floor of a kitchen? garage? workshop?, in any case of a private and closed space
the arms for an amusing battle. Where Peter Fischli and David Weiss, in their Der Lauf der Dinge, elaborated
a predetermined choreography of the collapse and chaos of things, Paul Pouvreau instils an order which,
because it is precarious and, in fine, absurd, nevertheless translates into the geometrical straightness of lines,
circles, squares and rectangles of dust. Yet there is no hand to wield these instruments of battle, there is no
subject who presides over the organization of things (Dominique Baqu: La fotografa plstica, Gustavo Gili,
Barcelona, 2003, pp. 231-232).
ENGLISH TRANSLATION
583
might or might not present texts which are to be read as fiction. Social truth is something more than a
question of convincing style (Allan Sekula: Desmantelar la modernidad, reinventar el documental. Notas
sobre la poltica de la representacin in Jorge Ribalta (ed.): Efecto real. Debates posmodernos sobre fotografa,
Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2004, p. 42).
162 Brassai continued to report on the underworld, out of bounds in Magic City, in opium dens, behind the
scenes at Suzys, along the vice-ridden Rue Quincampoix and the sleazy Rue de Lappe. He introduces Big
Alberts Gang, La Mme Bijou, Kiki, Conchita and The Pantheress. He encounters odd characters, but his
street people are, as a rule, more stylish than bizarre, and especially engrossed by matters of deportment and
dress (Ian Jeffrey: Photography, A Concise History, Thames & Hudson, 1981, p. 185).
177 The use of photography as a political instrument was recognised relatively late, because, on the one hand, until
our era, photography did not achieve the recognition of an accredited and precise technique; and, on the other hand,
because for many years one tended to think of photography as a neutral or objective medium and, consequently,
naturally excluded from the sphere of politics (Ernst Jnger: El mundo transformado. Una cartilla ilustrada de
nuestro tiempo in El mundo transformado seguido de El instante peligroso, Pre-textos, Valencia, 2005, p. 109).
163
All that photographys program of realism actually implies is the belief that reality is hidden. And, being
hidden, is something to be unveiled. Whatever the camera recalls is a disclosure whether it is
imperceptible, fleeting parts of movement, and order that natural vision is incapable of perceiving or a
heightened reality (Moholy-Nagys phrase), or simple the elliptical way of seeing (Susan Sontag: On
Photography, Noonday, New York, 1989, pp. 120-121).
164
165
166
Ian Jeffrey: Photography, A Concise History, Thames & Hudson, 1981, p. 218.
178
Cf. Jeff Wall: Seales de indiferencia: aspectos de la fotografa en el arte conceptual o como arte
conceptual in Gloria Picazo & Jorge Ribalta (eds.): Indiferencia y singularidad. La fotografa en el pensamiento
artstico contemporneo, MACBA, Barcelona, 1997, pp. 217-250.
179 Cf. Jean-Francois Chevrier/James Lingwood: Otra objetividad in Jorge Ribalta (ed.): Efecto real. Debates
posmodernos sobre fotografa, Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2004, pp. 240-243.
167 A photographer from New Jersey found in this city the twins that had posed for Arbus in 1967, thirteen
years previously, and he convinced them to pose for him. There is a slight mania for re-photographing
places and persons already seen in widely popularised photographs; I imagine that photographers have
discovered that time, instead of fading, flows (Martha Rosler: Dentro, alrededor, y otras reflexiones. Sobre
la fotografa documental in Jorge Ribalta (ed.): Efecto real. Debates posmodernos sobre fotografa, Gustavo Gili,
Barcelona, 2004, p. 123).
180
A work like Grahams Homes for America (1966), originally conceived as an article for an art magazine,
is now generally viewed as one of the first examples of allegorical deconstruction where the framework of
distribution, materiality and place of existence of the work defined the structure of the work from its
beginnings (Benjamin H.D. Buchloh: Procedimientos alegricos: apropiacin y montaje en el arte
contemporneo in Gloria Picazo & Jorge Ribalta (eds.): Indiferencia y singularidad. La fotografa en el
pensamiento artstico contemporneo, MACBA, Barcelona, 1997, p. 107).
168
Only modernists believe in the primacy of the cathartic unique image like those taken by H. CartierBresson and A. Kertsz (and only during a relatively short period in the thirties). In late modernism and
postmodernism the rule has been a continuum of images that are even displaced from one moment to the
next, as we can see for the first time in The Americans by R. Frank (1958) (Ian Jeffrey: interview in Joan
Fontcuberta (ed.): Fotografa. Crisis de historia, Actar, Barcelona, 2002, p. 26).
181
When I draw a person, an object I have to be aware of the proportion, precision, abstraction,
deformation, etc. When I paint from a photo, conscious thought is suppressed. I do not know what I do. My
work is more similar to informalism than any type of realism. Photography has its own abstraction which
his not easy to enter (Gerhard Richter: Notas, 1964-1965 in Gloria Picazo & Jorge Ribalta (ed.): Indiferencia
y singularidad. La fotografa en el pensamiento artstico contemporneo, MACBA, Barcelona, 1997, p. 17). When
he [Richter] began to use photography, he was not after, or so he said, painting with photography inspired by
photography, but something more radical: to make photography with painting (Jean-Francois Chevrier: El
cuadro y los modelos de la experiencia fotogrfica in Gloria Picazo & Jorge Ribalta (eds.): Indiferencia y
singularidad. La fotografa y el pensamiento artstico contemporneo, MACBA, Barcelona, 1997, p. 208).
169 Vincent Lavoie: El instante de la historia in Joan Fontcuberta (ed.): Fotografa. Crisis de historia, Actar,
Barcelona, 2002, p. 203.
170
It turns out that it was taken by Elliott Erwitt commissioned by the Doyle Dane Bernbach advertising
agency, who in turn were commissioned by the French tourist board in the fifties. Erwitt was paid one thousand
five hundred dollars for the photo, for which he used his driver and the drivers nephew: The man pedalled
forward and back about thirty times until Erwitt got the ideal composition. [ . . . ] Even in an image like this
with no degree of improvising Erwitts talent as a documentary photographer is evident, Erla Zwingle claimed
in amazement in the Inside Advertising column published in the December 1979 issue of American
Photographer (Martha Rosler: Dentro, alrededor y otras reflexiones. Sobre la fotografa documental in Jorge
Ribalta (ed.): Efecto real. Debates posmodernos sobre fotografa, Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2004, p. 81).
182
In 1970 New York Museum of Modern Art held the international survey show Information. It was a
prediction of what the curator Kynaston McShine and the organizers thought would be concerns of the art
of the following ten years: art as data collection and experimentation with forms of the evidential. The
exhibition catalogue contained a keynote image called Dust Breeding (Elevages de poussire) that was made a
full half century earlier. In 1920 the photographer Man Ray visited Marcel Duchamps New York studio and
saw a sheet of glass lying flat, gathering dust. Far from being a scene of neglect, Duchamp had been
cultivating dust as a stage in the manufacture of his mixed-media sculpture The Large Glass. Man Ray
photographed it, made it semi-abstract by cropping down to exclude the studio and gave it its title, although
it also went under other names, including View from an Aeroplane. Both artists signed it and it occupies a
distinct if minor place in their oeuvres. Six years on from Information the critic Rosalind Krauss looked
back and saw that the evidential in the form of the index or trace had indeed become a preoccupation of art,
particularly in North America. More than that she compared the turn quite explicitly to the increasingly
influential work of Duchamp and emphasized Dust Breeding as an important precursor. [] In an early essay
in Artforum the writer Robert Pincus-Witten reproduced Dust Breeding next to one of Bruce Naumans
photographs from his series Flour Arrangements (1967). Over the course of a month Nauman manipulated a
heap of common flour into various shapes on his empty studio floor, documenting the changing forms and,
by implication, his sculptural activity. Nauman has often deployed the camera to make slight forms visible
and available without having to make them seem permanent (David Campany: Survey in Art and
Photography, Phaidon Press, London, 2003, p. 25).
171 Or when Alexander Gardner moved the body of a confederate soldier for compositional reasons to obtain
his famous Home of a Rebel Sharpshooter. Cf. A. D. Coleman: El mtodo dirigido. Notas para una definicin
in Jorge Ribalta (ed.): Efecto real. Debates posmodernos sobre fotografa, Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2004, p. 136.
172
But in its mode of address, documentary transformed the flat rhetoric of evidence into an emotionalised
drama of experience that worked to effect an imaginary identification of viewer and image, reader and
representation, which would suppress difference and seal them into the paternalistic relations of domination
and subordination on which documentarys truth effects depended (John Tagg: The Burden of
Representation, Essays on Photographies and Histories, Palgrave MacMillan, 1988, p. 12).
173
Martha Rosler: Dentro, alrededor y otras reflexiones. Sobre la fotografa documental in Jorge Ribalta
(ed.): Efecto real. Debates posmodernos sobre fotografa, Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2004, p. 74.
174 John Stathatos spoke of class voyeurism: Voyeurism has always been an inseparable part of photographic
mediation; the act of photography is by and large the privilege of the powerful, with the powerless of all kinds
offering traditionally rich and exotic subject matter. So much is commonplace; what is more interesting is the
fact that condescension is now frequently replaced by contempt (John Stathatos: Images for the End of
Time in Tate: The Art Magazine, London, Winter 1999).
183
Kevin Power: Jrgen Klauke: el revestimiento del cuerpo virtual in Jrgen Klauke. El yo desastroso. Obra
reciente 1996-2001, Museo Internacional de Arte Contemporneo, Lanzarote, 2001, p. 21.
184
175
Martha Rosler named this other documentary that is bent on exposing certain abuses in peoples
working situation, of the growing hegemony of financial companies in cities, racism, sexism and the
oppression of class; works akin to militancy and self-organization, or works that support them (Martha
Rosler: Dentro, alrededor y otras reflexiones. Sobre la fotografa documental in Jorge Ribalta (ed.): Efecto
real. Debates posmodernos sobre fotografa, Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2004, p. 96).
185
The advance that photography brought about in this regard was also explored by Clement Greenberg.
For Greenberg, photographys best quality was its transparency: the art of photography is above all a
literal art . . . Photographs reach their artistic nature when they call less attention on themselves and allow
the practical meaning of the theme to come out. On the other hand, photographs become works of art
when they transcend the purely documentary and express something that affects more than simple
cognition (Andrea Kunard: El arte mecnico: algunos debates histricos sobre arte y fotografa in Joan
Fontcuberta (ed.): Fotografa. Crisis de historia, Actar, Barcelona, 2002, p. 170). See also in this regard, Victor
176
The truly critical social documentary will focus on crime, justice, and the whole judicial system and its
official myths. Artists who follow this goal may or may not produce theatrical and openly faked images; they
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identifying the drawing as a work by Robert Rauschenberg titled Erased De Kooning Drawing (1953). At
the peak of abstract expressionism and its complete dominion over the art world, this act could surely
have been seen as a sublimated parricide attack by the most advanced artist of the new generation, but it
actually appears to have been one of the first instances of allegorisation in the art of the post New York
School. This can be recognised as such in its procedures of appropriation, the erasure of the confiscated
image, the superimposition or duplication of a visual text by a second text and the diversion of attention
and interpretation towards the mechanism of framing (Benjamin H.D. Buchloh: Procedimientos
alegricos: apropiacin y montaje en el arte contemporneo in Gloria Picazo & Jorge Ribalta (eds.):
Indiferencia y singularidad. La fotografa en el pensamiento artstico contemporneo, MACBA, Barcelona,
1997, p. 104).
Burgin: Ver el sentido in Jorge Ribalta (ed.): Efecto real. Debates posmodernos sobre fotografa, Gustavo Gili,
Barcelona, 2004, p. 181. Szarkowskis ontology of photography makes photography a modernist medium in
Clement Greenbergs sense of the term an art form that can distinguish itself in its essential qualities from
all other art forms (Douglas Crimp: The Museums Old, the Librarys New Subject in On the Museums
Ruins, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1993, p. 75).
186
While the montage of the decade of the twenties was in consonance with the idea of the avant-garde, the
contemporary cross-contamination is post-modern. Which is to say that it intervenes after the exhaustion of
modernist schemas, or in other words it no longer believes in the possibility of producing a new, original
image rather it advocates the quotation and recycling of images, the reappropriation of styles (Dominique
Baqu: La fotografa plstica, Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2003, p. 197).
198 To get ones bearings in this mechanism of absolute erasure we could avail of the idea of foreclosure, taken
from Lacan. Distinct from repression, I forget that it leaves traces, I forget the time of ruins, this names a
radical abolition, the absolute negativity of what arises in the light of the symbolic, of what comes out
to meet all manifestations of symbolic order. Without word, what comes out, then, to meet all reminiscences,
because it does not leave, instead of a trace, more than a hiancy: A hole (Grard Wajcman: El objeto del
siglo, Amorrortu, Buenos Aires, 2001, p. 20).
187
Joan Fontcuberta: Revisitar las historias de la fotografa in Joan Fontcuberta (ed.): Fotografa. Crisis de
historia, Actar, Barcelona, 2002, pp. 12-13.
188 In the last few years, a certain calculated duplicity has increasingly come to be regarded as an
indispensable deconstructive tool. Both contemporary art and contemporary theory are rich in parody, trompe
loeil, dissimulation (and not simulation, as is often said) that is, in strategies of mimetic rivalry (Craig
Owens: Posing in Beyond Recognition. Representation, Power, and Culture, University of California Press,
Berkeley, 1984, p. 201).
199
When he discovered how fast the spurned waste was aestheticised (the beauty of a rusty license plate, for
instance, became evident to all), he abandoned his combines and began to make compositions based on images
vomited out by newspapers every day: the action on a baseball field, a parachute, a motorway junction, a
Fourth of July parade or the batons of the riot police thrown in the air. The fragments of photographs were
transferred to the canvas by a process of serigraphy. See Dorothy Seckler: The Artist speaks: Robert
Rauschenberg in Art in America, no. 54, May-June 1966, p. 73.
189 Martha Rosler: Dentro, alrededor y otras reflexiones. Sobre la fotografa documental in Jorge Ribalta
(ed.): Efecto real. Debates posmodernos sobre fotografa, Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2004, p. 107. A discussion on
the positions of Martha Rosler and Sherrie Levine, who confessed that I make photographs of photographs,
can be found in Benjamin H.D. Buchloh: Procedimientos alegricos: apropiacin y montaje en el arte
contemporneo in Gloria Picazo & Jorge Ribalta (eds.): Indiferencia y singularidad. La fotografa en el
pensamiento artstico contemporneo, MACBA, Barcelona, 1997, pp. 119-122.
200
Leo Steinberg: The Flatbed Picture Plane in Art in Theory 1900-1990, An Anthology of Changing ideas,
eds. Charles Harrison and Paul Wood, Blackwell, Oxford, 1992, p. 951.
190 The analogy of the Stoss of art with this experience of anxiety may be appreciated if one recalls that the
work of art does not allow itself to be drawn back into a pre-established network of significance, at least
insofar as it cannot be deduced as a logical consequence. Moreover, it does not simply slot into the world as
it is, but purports to shed new light upon it (Gianni Vattimo: Art and Oscillation in The Transparent
Society, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992, p. 50).
191
201
For at a certain moment photography enters the practice of art in such a way that it contaminates the
purity of modernisms separate categories, the categories of painting and sculpture. These categories are
subsequently divested of their fictive autonomy, their idealism, and thus their power. The first positive
instances of this contamination occurred in the early 1960s, when Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol
began to silkscreen photographic images onto their canvases (Douglas Crimp: The Museums Old, the
Librarys New Subject in On the Museums Ruins, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1993, p. 77).
Cf. Paul Virilio: Esttica de la desaparicin, Anagrama, Barcelona, 1998, pp. 7-8.
192 Slavoj Zizek: The Ticklish Subject. The absent centre of political ontology, Verso, London-New York, 2000, p. 309.
202 What is Andy Warhols Sleep? What isnt it? Is it cinema? It is the most advanced aspect of Pop Art? The
slowing down, stretching a detail to its limit, to what maximum effect? The use of the screen as a soundboard
for the spectators dreams, ghosts or thoughts? An exercise in hypnosis? Test of patience? A Zen joke? Does
it irritate you, and, if so, why? Cant you relax and appreciate a good joke? Doesnt it remind us that there is
not much sense in rushing? Anyhow, to go where (John Mekas: Sur Sleep dAndy Warhol in Et tous ils
changent le monde, Lyon Biennale, 1993, p. 105).
193
The need for passionate attachment to provide for a minimum of being implies that the subject qua
abstract negativity the primordial gesture of dis-attachment from its environment is already there.
Fantasy is thus a defence-formation against the primordial abyss of dis-attachment, of the loss of (the support
in) being, which is the subject itself. At this precise point, then, Butler should be supplemented: the
emergence of the subject is not strictly equivalent to subjection (in the sense of passionate attachment, of
submission to some figure of the Other), since for passionate attachment to take place the gap that is the
subject must already be there. Only if this gap is already there can we explain how it is possible for the subject
to escape the whole of the fundamental fantasy. (Slavoj Zizek: The Ticklish Subject. The absent centre of
political ontology, Verso, London-New York, 2000, p. 289).
203
As Warhol wrote in POPism During this period I took thousands of Polaroids of genitals. Whenever
somebody came up to the Factory, no matter how straight-looking he was, Id ask him to take his pants off
so I could photograph his cock and balls. Personally, I loved porno and I bought lots of it all the time
the really dirty, exciting stuff. All you had to do was figure out what turned you on, and then just buy the
dirty magazines and movie prints that are right for you, the way youd go for the right pills or the right cans
of food. Warhols vision of the porn cornucopia resembles his painted Campbell soup larder: find your
flavour, among the thirty-two, and stick to it. American food manufacture affords a democracy of choice as
bountiful as the populism of porn, its multiflavoured openhandedness towards all comers (Wayne
Koestenbaum: Andy Warhol: A Penguin Life, Viking Books, 2001, pp. 136-137).
194
Correlatively, the formation of the I is symbolized in dreams by a fortress or a stadium its inner arena
and enclosure, surrounded by marches and rubbish-tips, dividing it into two opposed fields of contest where
the subject flounders in quest of the haughty and remote inner castle, which, in its shape (sometimes
juxtaposed in the same scenario), symbolizes the id in startling fashion. (Jacques Lacan: The Mirror-Phase
as Formative of the Function of the I in Art in Theory 1900-1990, An Anthology of Changing ideas, eds. Charles
Harrison and Paul Wood, Blackwell, Oxford, 1992, p. 612).
204
[ . . . ] in his own compulsive and improvised snapshots, Warhol also broke away radically from the
photographic vision as a subjective manipulation of the visible; he used the printing of images on film as a
mechanical memorization of the incidents in an imaginary life completely conditioned by images (JeanFrancois Chevrier/James Lingwood: Otra objetividad in Jorge Ribalta (ed.): Efecto real. Debates
posmodernos sobre fotografa, Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2004, p. 248).
195
Douglas Crimp: The Photographic Activity of Postmodernism in On the Museums Ruins, The MIT
Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1993, p. 118.
196 Photography is deictic; it signals; it speaks: that. For the semiologist it is an index, an indexical sign, the
reason why it is a deictic. Nonetheless, Lacan called the encounter with the real the tychic [ . . . ] from the
word tuch. And given that it is a basically lost encounter a lost connection, a lost una cita perdida the
phenomenon in this case deals with the dustuchia: the dystic, the split. Deictic and dystic almost rhyme
(Rosalind Krauss: Fotografa y abstraccin in Jorge Ribalta (ed.): Efecto real. Debates posmodernos sobre
fotografa, Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2004, p. 236).
205 To describe [dpeindre] is [ . . . ] to refer not from a language to a referent but from one code to another. Thus,
realism consists not in copying the real but in copying a (depicted) copy of the real [ . . . ] through secondary mimesis,
it [realism] copies what is already a copy (Roland Barthes: S/Z, Hill and Wang, New York, 1974, pp. 54-55).
206 Photography, always located between the fine arts and the mass media, is the privileged tool of a demand
for realism that cannot be satisfied with the production of autonomous objects, nor yet with reproduction, no
matter how distanced and critical it is, of pre-existing images. By means of the re-actualisation of the model
of reproduction, as a historical rule of a description called realist, the question of the real is what has been
actualised, brought up to date and restored to the experience of the one who gazes (Jean-Francois Chevrier:
197
In 1953, Rauschenberg received a drawing from Willem de Kooning after telling him that he
intended to erase the drawing and turn it into the theme for his own work. After the careful exercise in
erasing it, leaving traces of pencil and traces of the strokes of the drawing that were the clues to obtain
visual evidence, the drawing was placed in a golden frame. The metal label on the frame was the sign
ENGLISH TRANSLATION
585
220
207
221 Cf. John Flecher: Versions of Masquerade in Screen, 29, no. 3, 1988 and Griselda Pollock: Mujeres
ausentes. (Un replanteamiento de antiguas reflexiones sobre imagines de la mujer in Revista de Occidente, no.
127, December, 1991, pp. 92-93.
Craig Owens discusses this theory in Posing in Beyond Recognition. Representation, Power, and Culture,
University of California Press, Berkeley, 1984, pp. 212-214.
The discourse in the art world was identified with the photographic. [ . . . ] I mean the notion of the
photographic as opposed to photography per se, theorisation of the photographic in terms of its multiple
copies: no reflection of originality in the original, timed with the death of the author, the mechanisation of
image production (Craig Owens interviewed by Anders Stephanson: Interview with Craig Owens in
Beyond Recognition. Representation, Power, and Culture, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1992, p. 300).
222
Post-modern art photography, for instance that produced by Sherman, is known for its obsessive
reflection on itself, for its parasitary self-reproduction in form of selective quotations of the pictorial history
of photography itself. According to critics like Paul Virilio, the photographer, dominated by indifference, no
longer seems able to find anything new to photograph (Geoffrey Batchen: Arder en deseos. La concepcin de
la fotografa, Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2004, p. 215).
208 Douglas Crimp: The Photographic Activity of Postmodernism in On the Museums Ruins, The MIT
Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1993, p. 108.
209
223
Craig Owens: Posing in Beyond Recognition. Representation, Power, and Culture, University of California
Press, Berkeley, 1984, p. 210.
210
The current appearance of a certain kind of exhibition cinema for instance by Douglas Gordon
or the current trend in films by artists, would have been inconceivable without the previous appearance of a
post-cinema, of a hybrid dominion of the image in motion in which the narrative and post-narrative structures
of the discourses of television and cinema have collided and seen their autonomous forms deconstructed
(Jos Luis Brea: transfiguraciones contemporneas de la imagen-movimiento: del postcinema al postmedia
in Futuropresente. Prcticas artsticas en el cambio de milenio, Sala de Exposiciones de la Comunidad de
Madrid, 1999, pp. 53-54).
224 The mask establishes a discontinuity in the history of the world, it means the departure of the gods, the
appearance of death, the affirmation of the human as culture (Marc Petit: Des visages derobs in Le visage,
Autrement, Paris, 1994, p. 151.
225
Embodied in a point of light, the point at which everything that looks at me is situated, the Lacanian
gaze is punctual: it both punctuates (arrests, suspends) and punctures (pricks, wounds). If, posing for a
photograph, I freeze, it is not in order to assist the photographer, but in some sense to resist him, to protect
myself from his immobilising gaze. (Craig Owens: Posing in Beyond Recognition. Representation, Power,
and Culture, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1984, p. 211).
211 The expansion of cinema; the insistence on the process of constitution of the work; and art as activity were
the three indirect forms of reception of cinema by the visual arts during the sixties. All of them have been
characterised, physically and psychologically, by the relation/reaction of the spectator in his immediate
rapprochement, the theme of investigation and self-exploration of the art work (Jean-Christophe Royoux: Por
un cine de exposicin. Retomando algunos jalones histricos in Accin paralela, no. 5, January 2000, p. 100).
212
227 Cf. Joan Fontcuberta: Elogio del vampiro in El beso de Judas. Fotografa y verdad, Gustavo Gili,
Barcelona, 1997, pp. 41-42.
Cf. Robert Smithson: A Cinematic Atopia in The Writings, New York University Press, 1979, pp. 105-108.
228
[ . . . ] for the fiction Sherman discloses is the fiction of the self. Her photographs show that the supposed
autonomous and unitary self out of which those other directors would create their fictions is itself nothing
other than a discontinuous series of representations, copies, and fakes (Douglas Crimp: The Photographic
Activity of Postmodernism in On the Museums Ruins, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1993, p.
122).
213
Cf. Jean-Christophe Royoux: Projet pour un Texte: El modelo cinematogrfico en la obra de Marcel
Broodthaers in Marcel Broodthaers. Cinema, Centro Galego de Arte Contempornea, Santiago de
Compostela, 1997, p. 305.
214 Everywhere heteronomy has become standard: the media continuously act one in relation to the other,
they are in continuous contact, mixing together, hybridising, while art itself is increasingly more
contaminated, virused as Baudrillard would put it, by its Other the media culture and the cultural
industry (Dominique Baqu: La fotografa plstica, Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2003, p. 225).
229 The face is always Other. Our photographs, our stories, even the image that the mirror reflects of us does
not present us, but it offers us to the Other, an other being, different to how we see ourselves (Charo Crego:
Geografa de una pennsula. La representacin del rostro en la pintura, Abada, Madrid, 2004, p. 15).
230
215 [ . . . ] for the fiction Sherman discloses is the fiction of the self. [ . . . ] Shermans photographs are all selfportraits in which she appears in disguise enacting a drama whose particulars are withheld. This ambiguity
of narrative parallels the ambiguity of the self that is both actor in the narrative and creator of it (Douglas
Crimp: The Photographic Activity of Postmodernism in On the Museums Ruins, The MIT Press,
Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1993, p. 122).
Vctor Burgin: Ver el sentido in Jorge Ribalta (ed.): Efecto real. Debates posmodernos sobre fotografa,
Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2004, p. 176.
231
The incredibly complex group of muscles that activate the gestures have no other function but to allow
each face to demonstrate something to another face. The face of each human being only exists, from the
viewpoint of vision, for another face. It is at once, for each person, the testimony of a human presence and its
impenetrable enigma. For this reason it is impossible, when looking at the photograph of a human face, not
to project an intentionality onto it. When it is no longer confused with its own self and relates with another
person, the face of the other is transformed into a tangle of signs on its intentions that have to be decoded.
Yet, even in the absence of all human subject, a photograph always presents the spectator with questions on
the place it offers him. Finally, it is proper to all photographs and especially black and white photos to
impose an illusion of a gaze of the image (Serge Tisseron: El misterio de la cmara lcida. Fotografa e
inconsciente, University of Salamanca, 2000, p. 92).
216 There is a gap which forever separates the phantasmic kernel of the subjects being from the more
superficial modes of his or her symbolic and/or imaginary identifications it is never possible for me
fully to assume (in the sense of symbolic integration) the phantasmic kernel of my being: when I approach
it too boldly, when I come too close to it, what occurs is the aphanisis of the subject: the subject loses his/her
symbolic consistency, it disintegrates. And perhaps the forced actualization of the phantasmic kernel of my
being in social reality itself is the worst, most humiliating kind of violence, a violence which undermines
the very basis of my identity (of my self-image) (Slavoj Zizek: The Plague of Fantasies, Verso, London
New York, 1997, p. 188).
217
John Berger: Sera un retrato? in El tamao de una bolsa, Taurus, Madrid, 2004, p. 264.
226
232
[ . . . ] Avedons portraits bring to mind Byzantine iconography much more than the traditional art of the
portrait. We find in them three characteristics of the Byzantine icon: the rejection of depth of space through
the use of a clear, flat and uniform backdrop (in Byzantine iconography, the background was gold); the choice
of the face as a place for a possible encounter; and finally, the importance given to the gaze, especially the pupil
(Serge Tisseron: El misterio de la cmara lcida. Fotografa e inconsciente, University of Salamanca, 2000, p. 97)
Slavoj Zizek: The Plague of Fantasies, Verso, London New York, 1997, p. 141.
218 There is no true Sherman but then again there is no true spectator: in point of fact, Cindy Sherman
wants the spectator to be swallowed up, almost sucked in by her photographs, who believes that he
recognises in a certain posture in a Film Still some scene from a famous film, while in fact, as Cindy Sherman
herself confessed, no such scene ever existed. This means that through stereotypes, the spectator convinces
himself that a copy is the original and that a commonplace transmitted by the imaginary of the masses is
transformed into an event for his gaze, emotion and subjectivity (Dominique Baqu: La fotografa plstica,
Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2003, p. 227).
233
Rosalind E. Krauss: Notes on the Index, Part 1 in The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modern
Myths, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1986, p. 197. Roman Jakobson pointed out that the
concept of the shifter is one of the cornerstones of linguistics in his conversations with Krystyna Pomorska,
Cf. Lingstica, potica, tiempo, Crtica, Barcelona, 1981.
234
Rosalind E. Krauss: The Photographic Conditions of Surrealism in The Originality of the Avant-Garde
and Other Modern Myths, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1986, p. 118.
219
The work of American artist Cindy Sherman, with its acute invocation of iconic mannerisms from
cinematic stills, fashion photography, pornography and painting, is in many respects the primer exemplar of
postmodern art photography (Charlotte Cotton: The Photograph as Contemporary Art, Thames & Hudson,
London, 2004, p. 192).
235 It has been said that photography or at least the desire that the images are recorded spontaneously on
a light-sensitive surface was described by at least twenty different people in seven different countries,
586
ENGLISH TRANSLATION
between 1790 and 1839 approximately. The appearance of this desire [a desire to photograph] as discourse
almost always preceded and exceeded the necessary scientific knowledge for its realization (Geoffrey
Batchen: Arder en deseos. La concepcin de la fotografa, Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2004, p. 181).
for instance Chantier Rochechouart by Pierre Huyghe a simple billboard displaying construction sites on
display at the site itself like a redoubling it is not so much about redeeming the banal, nor transfiguring
it to go back to Arthur Dantos idea nor rescuing it from its banality. On the contrary, it is concerned
with depicting the banal in itself, in its pure being-there, to a gaze that will not allow it to escape its banality,
and which we could imagine as a scarcely attentive, distracted gaze. Almost bored . . . The banal is still banal,
and in these incredibly anodyne photographs, in which nothing or almost nothing attracts our attention, the
banal we might dare say is not debanalised. Because that is not what it is after (Dominique Baqu: La
fotografa plstica, Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2003, p. 230).
236 Photography, at least since the moment when Fox Talbot introduced the positive/negative technique,
could be viewed as the very example of what Jean Baudrillard recently called the industrial simulacrum
applied to those products of modern industrial processes from which we could say that potentially infinite
chains of equivalent, identical objects are derived (Christopher Phillips: El tribunal de la fotografa in
Gloria Picazo & Jorge Ribalta (eds.): Indiferencia y singularidad. La fotografa en el pensamiento artstico
contemporneo, MACBA, Barcelona, 1997, p. 59).
249
238 Cf. Vik Muniz & Charles Ashley: A Dialogue in Vik Muniz. Seeing is believing, Arena, Santa Fe, New
Mexico, 1998, p. 27.
Contemporary art that takes possession of the everyday is usually characterised by interventionist
strategies that fragment, group and realise their own mise en scne on pieces of experience registered with the
purpose of producing an impact of recognition. As Hal Foster pointed out in The Return of the Real, there is
a sensation that artists set themselves up as erratic anthropologists, who delve into ephemeral questions of
daily life and uncover it as another disturbingly different thing. Cf. Joanna Lowry: La fotografa, el vdeo
y lo cotidiano in Papel Alpha. Cuadernos de fotografa, no. 5, Salamanca, 2000, p. 5.
239
250
237
It is precisely this rupture with modernisms definition of the flat plane of representation and the triumph
of cross-contamination that Foster and Douglas Crimp found in Robert Rauschenbergs work: The
natural, uniform surface of the modernist painting is displaced by photographic procedures, by the totally
acultural and textural emplacement of the postmodern image. See Hal Foster: Introduccin al
posmodernismo in Hal Foster (ed.): La posmodernidad, Kairos, Barcelona, 1985, pp. 13-14.
for the Arts & Hatje Cantz Publishers, 2004, pp. 15-22.
252 Joanna Lowry: La fotografa, el vdeo y lo cotidiano in Papel Alpha. Cuadernos de fotografa, no. 5,
Salamanca, 2000, p. 9.
240
Martha Rosler warned us the postmodern aesthetic of photographs of photographs, the empire of
simulacrum, brings about the situation where we can only imagine a break outside social life: the alternative
is edenic or utopian. There is no social life, personal relations, groups, classes, nationalities; there is no
production other than the production of images. Nonetheless, a critique of ideology needs a certain
materialist underpinning to situate itself above the theological (Martha Rosler: Dentro, alrededor y otras
reflexiones. Sobre la fotografa documental in Jorge Ribalta (ed.): Efecto real. Debates posmodernos sobre
fotografa, Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2004, p. 107).
241
Mario Perniola: The Sex Appeal of the Inorganic, Continuum, New York, 2004, p. 143.
251 Cf. Ralf Rugoff: Liquid Humor in Erwin Wurm. I love my time, I dont like my time, Yerba Buena Center
253 It is worth underscoring the findings of psychoanalysis in relation with the neurotic symptom through
which a repressed idea is expressed through the inactive realization of a verbal metaphor; let us take an
example from Freuds clinical history: Doras hysterical vomiting when she remembered Herr Ks sexual
insinuations, a repressed idea that made her sick (Victor Burgin: Ver el sentido in Jorge Ribalta (ed.):
Efecto real. Debates posmodernos sobre fotografa, Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2004, p. 166).
254
Some photographers explored these questions [intimacy, eroticism, pornography, madness or genius]
photographying limit situations. These are images that in themselves question the category to which they
belong. And they do so displacing them to extremes (Johann Swinnen: Reciclar la realidad: buscar una
infraestructura histrica de la paradoja al paroxismo in Joan Fontcubertad (ed.): Fotografa. Crisis de historia,
Actar, Barcelona, 2002, p. 187).
Geoffrey Batchen: Arder en deseos. La concepcin de la fotografa, Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2004, 188.
242
Paul Virilio suggested that the speed of light now denotes our experience and the term gigaflops defines
the hypervelocity of computer calculations. Nonetheless, in these statistical representations of speed one
comes across what is known, perhaps euphemistically, as real time, those words that are now always put in
inverted commas because they have become a construct of technology. Real time seems to be a creation,
a construct conceived to remind us of the relationship between reality and temporality. Time, history,
memory elements of our interaction with the real (however problematised it is by ideology) are
transformed into categories of non-authenticity. It is a profound reconfiguration with the historical, whose
effects can only be glimpsed (Timothy Druckrey: Posthistoria/historia autnoma in Jorge Ribalta (ed.):
Efecto real. Debates posmodernos sobre fotografa, Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2004, p. 310).
255
Nan Goldin [ . . . ] extended the reach of the family album, covering not just weddings but also funerals,
not just candles on birthday cakes but also beatings and bruises, not just friends and lovers when they pull
funny faces or affectionately caress but also when they take drugs, piss and fuck (Joan Fontcuberta:
Videncia y evidencia in El beso de Judas. Fotografa y verdad, Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 1997, p. 59).
256
Victor Burgin: Mirar photographs in Gloria Picazo & Jorge Ribalta (eds.): Indiferencia y singularidad. La
fotografa en el pensamiento artstico contemporneo, MACBA, Barcelona, 1997, p. 40.
243
Benjamin H.D. Buchloh: Lo siniestro arquitectnico en las photographs de Andre Robbins y Max Becher
in Jorge Ribalta (ed.): Efecto real. Debates posmodernos sobre fotografa, Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2004, p. 337.
257 [] Im reminded of the diving suit in which Salvador Dali delivered a lecture some years ago in
London. The workman sent along to supervise the suit asked how deep Dali proposed to descend, and with
a flourish the maestro exclaimed: To the Unconscious! to which the workman replied sagely: Im afraid
we dont go down that deep. Five minutes later, sure enough, Dali nearly suffocated inside the helmet
(James G. Ballard: Which Way to Inner Space? in A Users Guide to the Millennium, Harper Collins,
London, 1996, p. 198).
244
Cf. Timothy Druckrey: LAmour Faux in Digital Photography: Captured Images, Volatile Memory, New
Montage, Camerawork, San Francisco, 1988 and William J. Mitchell: The Reconfigured Eye. Visual Truth in
the Post-Photographic Era, The MIT Press, Cambridge, 1992.
245
This loss of reality occurs not only in computer-generated VR but, at a more elementary level, already
with the growing hyperrealism of the images with which the media bombard us more and more, we
perceive only colour and outline, no longer depth and volume: Without visual limit there can be no, or
almost no, mental imagery; without a certain blindness, no tenable appearance. [Paul Virilio]. Or as Lacan
put it without a blind spot in the field of vision, without this elusive point from which the object returns
the gaze, we no longer see something; the field of vision is reduced to a flat surface, and reality itself is
perceived as a visual hallucination. (Slavoj Zizek: The Plague of Fantasies, Verso, London New York, 1997,
p. 133).
258
Ernst Jnger: Sobre el peligro in El mundo transformado seguido de El instante peligroso, Pre-textos,
Valencia, 2005, p. 314.
259
Victor Burgin: Mirar fotografas in Gloria Picazo & Jorge Ribalta (eds.): Indiferencia y singularidad. La
fotografa en el pensamiento artstico contemporneo, MACBA, Barcelona, 1997, p. 31.
260
Daniel Girardin: Historias de la fotografa, historia de las photographs in Joan Fontcuberta (ed.):
Fotografa. Crisis de historia, Actar, Barcelona, 2002, p. 92.
Jeff Walls Diagonal Composition no. 3 may at first seem to be an unusual work for him because of the
absence of a cast of actors or impressive mise-en-scne. It seems to be a casual, awkwardly cropped shot of
mundane subjects. The zigzag of the skirting board, cupboard, mop, bucket and dirty linoleum floor is,
however, not merely a sight glanced at and then recorded. Walls careful construction of a grouping of
peripheral things prompts questions about our own relationship with photographs: Why are we looking at
this? At what point in history and our own lives did a corner of a floor represented in a photograph become
iconic, worthy of our attention? To what degree does it need to be abstracted by the seemingly innocent frame
in order for us to recognize this grouping of non-subjects to be a still life? The beauty of Walls photography
is that, while it raises these complex questions, it still satisfies us as works of art (Charlotte Cotton: The
Photograph as Contemporary Art, Thames & Hudson, London, 2004, pp. 131-132).
248
261
246 The adoption of a deadpan aesthetic moves art photography outside the hyperbolic, sentimental and
subjective. [] Deadpan photography may be highly specific in its description of its subjects, but its seeming
neutrality and totality of vision is of epic proportions (Charlotte Cotton: The Photograph as Contemporary Art,
Thames & Hudson, London, 2004, p. 81). This inexpressive aesthetic can be found in photographers like
Andreas Gursky, Thomas Ruff, Thomas Struth, Candida Hfer and Axel Htte.
247
Placing oneself at the level of reality, at the level of things. Rooting oneself in the most automatic, most
common everyday, yet without sumblimating it. We should not deceive ourselves: in this type of work, like
ENGLISH TRANSLATION
Jean-Francois Chevrier: La intimidad territorial. Una idea fotogrfica in Papel Alpha. Cuadernos de
fotografa, no. 5, Salamanca, 2000, p. 57.
587
262 Statement made by Jeff Wall in 1987 and reported by Jean-Francois Chevrier in: At Home and Elsewhere.
Dilogo en Bruselas entre Jeff Wall y Jean-Francois Chevrier in Jeff Wall: Ensayos y entrevistas, Centro de
Arte de Salamanca, 2003, p. 54.
term designating the basic situation in whch the adult presents the child with non verbal and verbal, and
also conductual signifiers impregnated with unconscious sexual significations. This is what Laplanche calls
enigmatic signifiers: the child feels that these signifiers are addressed to him, but he does not have the
means to understand their meaning; his attempts to dominate and to symbolize the enigma, provoke anxiety
and leave unconscious residues. This estrangement in the libidinal relationship with the object is an inevitable
condition of the entrance into the adult world, and we can expect to find its traces in all subsequent
relationships with even the most normal object (Victor Burgin: Espacio perverso in Ensayos, Gustavo Gili,
Barcelona, 2004, p. 141).
263 Arthur C. Danto: Las expresiones simblicas del yo in Ms all de la Caja Brillo. Las artes visuales desde
la perspectiva posthistrica, Akal, Madrid, 2003, p. 74.
264 In fact, the accident has suddenly become inhabitable, to the detriment of the substance of the shared
world This is what is meant by the integral accident, the accident which integrates us globally, and
which sometimes even disintegrates us physically. So, in a word which is now foreclosed, where all is
explained by mathematics or psychoanalysis, the accident is what remains unexpected, truly surprising, the
unknown quantity in a totally discovered planetary habitat, a habitat over-exposed to everyones gaze, from
which the exotic has suddenly disappeared in favour of that endotic Victor Hugo called upon when he
explained to us that, It is inside of ourselves that we have to see the outside a terrible admission of
asphyxia (Paul Virilio: Unknown Quantity, Thames & Hudson, Fondation Cartier pour lart contemporain,
2002, p. 129).
273 In real life, when we meet somebody, we can talk to him, exchange ideas, and we can get to know them.
The image, on the other hand, represents the other as an enigma. The enigma makes its appearance in the
image. One of the greatest powers of art is to reveal the enigma of people; Shakespeare is one of the great
masters in this matter, his characters do not know one another, they misinterpret one another. All the great
fabricators of images have revealed to us what life hides: we are enigmas for ourselves, and we can experience
this in art (Jeff Wall interviewed by Jean-Francois Chevrier in Jeff Wall: Ensayos y entrevistas, Centro de Arte
de Salamanca, 2003, p. 32).
265 Jentsch has taken as a very good instance doubts whether an apparently animate being is really alive; or
conversely, whether a lifeless object might not be in fact animate; and he refers in this connection to the
impression made by wax-work figures, ingeniously constructed dolls and automata (Sigmund Freud: Lo
siniestro prefacing E.T.A. Hoffmann: El hombre de arena, Jos J. de Olaeta, Barcelona, 1991, p. 18).
274
It was very early when Freud had the idea, reformulated in 1900, that dreams are the hallucinatory
realization of the unconscious desire, and immediately it seemed to him the model for the primary form of
functioning characterized by a slippage of meaning of representation in representation following processes
such as displacement, the condensation whose importance will be detected in the elaboration of the dream
(Catherine Desprats-Pquignot: El psicoanlisis, Alianza, Madrid, 1997, p. 47).
266 The phenomenon of the cryptic incorporation described by Abraham and Torok, has been revised by
Jacques Derrida in this text Fors: The Anglish Words of Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok, where he
throws light on the singularity of a space which he defines at once as external and internal: the crypt is,
therefore, one place compressed in another but the same, rigorously separated, isolated from general space by
means of walls, an enclosure, an enclave: this is the example of an intestine exclusion or clandestine
inclusion (Mario Perniola: Larte e la sua ombra, Einaudi, Turin, 2000, p. 100).
275
Valentn N. Voloshinov: Freudismo. Un bosquejo crtico, Paids, Buenos Aires, 1999, p. 111.
276
There is often a passage in even the most thoroughly interpreted dream which has to be left obscure; this
is because we become aware during the work of interpretation that at that point there is a tangle of dreamthoughts which cannot be unravelled and which moreover adds nothing to our knowledge of the content of
the dream. This is the dreams navel, the spot where it reaches down into the unknown. The dream-thoughts
to which we are led by interpretation cannot, from the nature of things, have any definite endings; they are
bound to branch out in every direction into the intricate network of our world of thought. It is at some point
where this meshwork is particularly close that the dream-wish grows up (Sigmund Freud: The Interpretation
of Dreams, Avon, reissue edition, 1980, p. 564).
267
Universal direct participatory community will exclude all the more forcefully those who are
prevented from participating in it. The vision of cyberspace opening up a future of unending possibilities
of limitless change, of new multiple sex organs, and so on, conceals its exact opposite: an unheard-of
imposition of radical closure. This, then, is the Real awaiting us, and all endeavours to symbolize this
Real, from utopian (the New Age or deconstructionist celebrations of the liberating potentials of
cyberspace) to the blackest dystopian ones (the prospect of the total control by a God-like computerized
network . . . ), are just that: so many attempts to avoid the true end of history, the paradox of an infinity
far more suffocating than any actual confinement (Slavoj Zizek: The Plague of Fantasies, Verso, London
New York, 1997, p. 154).
277 In dreams, something very trivial can take centre stage, that is to say, receive the emotional focus;
in this case a displacement of the feelings takes place as does the attention with respect to the thing, person
or situation that awakens these feelings. Hence it is possible for something as intranscendental as, for
instance, an ice cube to become, in a dream, the object of a very strong emotion (Victor Burgin: Ver el
sentido in Jorge Ribalta (ed.): Efecto real. Debates posmodernos sobre fotografa, Gustavo Gili, Barcelona,
2004, p. 168).
268
The locked-in syndrome is a rare neurological pathology that leads to complete paralysis, an incapacity to
speak, while maintaining the ability to think and reason. The establishment of synchronization and free
exchange is the temporary understanding of interactivity, that interacts on the real space of our immediate
accustomed activities, but above all on our mentalities (Paul Virilio in dialogue with Sylvre Lotringer:
Amanecer crepuscular, Fondo de Cultura Econmica, Mexico, 2003, p. 80).
278 I believe that the problem of the work of art is the opposite [from Kandinskys idea that art tries to make
the visible invisible]: in what way, with material, with something visible, with an object, can we touch not
the invisible (the word makes the head hurt a little), but what escapes visibility, call it pure surprise, or
unsayability, or horror, or absence, or whatever you like? (Grard Wajcman: El objeto del siglo, Amorrortu,
Buenos Aires, 2001, p. 155).
269
La photographie est bien entendu, par excellence, un art du double. Or, prcisment, cette fonction de
duplication de la ralit ne satisfait pas Duane Michals, il la rpet cent fois: Limportant nest pas
lapparence des choses, mais leur nature philosophique (Renaud Camus: Lombre dun double in Duane
Michals, Nathan, Paris, 1997).
279 While the avant-garde believed in the possibility of constructing history, of conferring it form the form
of the new, when not, more radically, the form of revolution of inventing its meaning; while
postmodernism never stops returning to history, appropriating it by revising models, schools and stances, at
the end of the nineties photography, and in this it is no different than that extreme of the contemporary
Paul Ardenne spoke of, was made in another place: in the pure and fragile present of the given moment
(Dominique Baqu: La fotografa plstica, Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2003, p. 234).
270
Emptiness, equally a blank page and an abyss or bottomless pit for the gaze, for Freud would be the image
of a primary repression, a defence prior to any impulse from which we must defend ourselves. For criticism,
this emptiness is the colourless sum of all colours, which is the white light of the trope. Melville called it atheism,
with which I believe, he meant atheism from a gnostic position, the negation of a strange and true god, or the
idea that invisible spheres are formed in fear. The emptiness is whiteness or blackness, because both exclude
colour (Harold Bloom: Los vasos rotos, Fondo de Cultura Econmica, Mexico, 1986, p. 90).
280
What is involved in this photograph, then or, for that matter, in any photograph is the figuration of
a gaze which objectifies and masters, of course, but only by immobilising its objects turning them to stone.
(Craig Owens: Posing in Beyond Recognition. Representation, Power, and Culture, University of California
Press, Berkeley, 1984, p. 207).
271 The enigmatic meaning becomes evident then as a formally undecidible signified, which brings with it
two levels of the enigmatic: on the one hand, the copresence of two alternating and reversible (literal/figured)
projects of understanding that can be equally yet inversely applied on expressions produces, not just an
ambiguity or ambivalence of the statement, but its incomprehensibility, the foreclosure of understanding in
the act of verifying undecidible relations of signification; on the other hand, the verification of this semantic
undecibility is limited to the detection of two possibilities of understanding whose formal coexistence leads
to nonsense or a contradictory meaning (Jos M. Cuesta Abad: Poema y enigma, Huerga & Fierro, Madrid,
1999, pp. 34-35).
281 According to the logic of diffrance, to some extent, in point of fact photography has always existed; a
photograph has never stopped existing. What is photosynthesis, after all, but an organic world of writing with
light? It comes as no surprise that all the history of western philosophy has recurred to the metaphor of light
and the sun; as Derrida suggested, western thinking is, in itself, a form of photology. Taking this starting
point, Eduardo Cadava has claimed that: there was never a period without photography, without the residue
and writing of light. If, in the beginning, was the word, this word has always beeen a word of light the let
there be light without which there would be no history (Geoffrey Batchen: Arder en deseos. La concepcin
de la fotografa, Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2004, p. 184).
272 For the human animal, sexuality is not so much an urgency that must be obeyed as an enigma to decode.
Laplanche identified the precocious and inevitable encounter of the subject with primordial seduction, a
588
ENGLISH TRANSLATION
282
We ought probably to reread certain extracts from Roland Barthes: S/Z, Hill and Wang, New York, 1974.
283 One of the earliest photographers to interest himself in the use of artificial lighting was Nadar. His studio
in the boulevard des Capucines contained a large portable Bunsen battery, and with this equipment he
astounded Parisians about 1860 by taking the first photographs of Paris catacombs and sewers (Aaron
Scharf: Art and Photography, Penguin Books, reprint edition, 1983, p. 61).
284 (Hence the Winter Garden Photograph, however pale, is for me the treasury of rays which emanated from
my mother as a child, from her hair, her skin, her dress, her gaze, on that day.) (Roland Barthes: Camera
Lucida, Hill and Wang, New York, 1997, p. 82).
It seemed pressing to bridge this lag in relation to painting, in order to first enter the
antechamber of the fine arts, and to subsequently be examined and have its case dealt
with: and afterwards to enter the art market and finally become the focus of collectors.
Alfred Stieglitz, a multi-faceted, eclectic personality, and crucial player in the history of
photography, established and directed Photo-Secession, a movement involving artists
like Gertrude Kasebier, Edward Steichen, Alvin Langdon Coburn and many others. In
Europe, Robert Demachy, Constant Puyo or Heinrich Kuhn advocated a similar
approach, executing elegant photographs, often suffused with Baroque-like ambiences.
285
It might be a repugnant excremental intrusion: There lies the meaning of the famous No Trespassing
sign in the opening and final scenes of Citizen Kane: it is highly dangerous to enter into this realm of
maximum intimacy, where one finds more than one is looking for and, suddenly, when it is too late to
withdraw, one finds oneself in a viscous and obscene realm . . . (Slavoj Zizek: The Plague of Fantasies, Verso,
London New York, 1997).
With the passing of the years, photography reached consciousness, assuming its own
role and mission. It could be said that it seemed, since then and forever, that it took the
initiative: a faithful chronicler of the world, never tiring from documenting it, as
Francis Frith and Auguste Salzmann, Edouard Baldus or Maxime du Camp, Felice
Beato and so many others had done in the Middle and Far East half a century before,
and that was now possible to do by simply walking down the street and looking around
us, recognising in everyday life that sense of reality imbuing life in a world which is, at
any given moment, unique and different. Through his refined and cultivated editorial
work in the last years of Camera Work, Stieglitz, now aligned with artists like Paul
Strand, continued giving life to and upholding what was defined as straight
photography due to its immediacy and its power to directly express what the lens
sometimes finds and other times chooses. Shooting, unexpectedly emerging as a new
vision of the world, the magical snapshot attracting and bringing ordinary people into
contact with this new, easy art practice, immediately triggered off other
groundbreaking reflections on photography and its expressive potential, now freed
from its alleged submission to painting.
COLLECTING PHOTOGRAPHS:
A NEVER-ENDING STORY
FILIPPO MAGGIA
What do you do with beauty? You admire it, you praise it, you embellish it (or try
to), you display it; or you conceal it. Could you have something supremely beautiful
and not want to show it to others?1
Collecting photographs is like collecting the world: fragment after fragment, the whole
is remade every day, augmented with new images, verifying where and how it has
changed, who has arrived and who has left us, what has been built where once there
was a family home or a crumbling neighbourhood, how teenagers from different races
and colours dress to identify themselves, and perhaps to defend themselves from the
permanently overhanging threat of homogenisation or, who knows, from a society
which wants them to enlist in the ranks of adulthood. Apart from telling stories the
truth of which words do not often express, photographs show how the gaze unfolds,
how it studies its surrounding environs, each time highlighting and pinpointing places
and small features that mark the passing of time, and the relentless mutation altering
the face of the world we like to think we know.
Since then, photography had still many paths to travel, first of all focusing on itself
the equivalences of the indefatigable Stieglitz and later starting to look at the
world in an attempt to better understand it, reconsidering aspects that would
otherwise vanish instantaneously, like the faces of those New-Yorkers
immortalised by Walker Evans, or the profound and desperate eyes of immigrants
taken by Dorothea Lange, which are forever engraved in our memory. But they
were also years for experimentation, from Man Ray and his rayographs, his
solarizations, Umbos Bauhaus, Herbert Bayer, Lszl Moholy-Nagy, Paul
Citroen, the futurist photo-dynamism of Anton Giulio Bragaglia, the Dada
inspired and Surrealist photomontage of Raoul Hausmann and Alexander
Rodchenko, of El Lissitzky, to compositions more clearly influenced by clear-cut
political meanings, true messages aimed at the people in the works by John
Heartfield or Hannah Hoch.
Right from the outset of photography, it has never been able to conceal anything, not
even when it tried to take on the mantle of another in search of its own identity, of a soul
it was still unaware of, following in the footsteps of painting. And so, at the end of the
1800s, while painters hungry for knowledge experimented with photography Courbet,
Orientalists such as Delacroix and Ingres, and the Divisionists like Segantini and
Morbelli, besides many others many photographers adopted pictorialism as their own
creed, forfeiting reality and its many tones and contrasts to a vaporous flou effect,
ENGLISH TRANSLATION
589
in that same reality, mixing up its contents and valences which are not merely aesthetic,
but also social, cultural, and ideological, greatly contributing to the hard-hitting
political debate already underway in the early decades of the 20th century.
assuming a little bit of all of them. Indeed, in the collection we can find many
photographers who ought to be considered true masters thanks to the area in which
they have operated or the style they invented. These include August Sander, JeanEugne Atget, Julia Margaret Cameron, Alfred Stieglitz, Walker Evans, Manuel
lvarez Bravo, Bill Brandt, Robert Capa, and Henri Cartier-Bresson; a representative
selection of artists recalling artistic movements such as Surrealism, Dada or
Constructivism: Frantisek Drtikol, Jaromir Funke, and the above-mentioned Raoul
Hausmann, John Heartfield, Lszl Moholy-Nagy, El Lissitzky, Man Ray, and the
lesser known Gustav Gustavovich Klucis or Valentina Kulagina; an incredible and
unique choice of Iberian artists who have experimented with and extended the concept
of photomontage, from political to social photomontage, with a declination of the
typical Spanish Surrealism which ranges from the paintings by Salvador Dal to
photographic prints. We would also have to name pioneers like William Fox Talbot
and Hippolyte Bayard, with their calotypes and direct positives on paper.
Furthermore, the American post-war school of street photography, tackling the social
with increasing effectiveness thanks to the lucid and romantic Robert Frank, the crude
and tenacious Diane Arbus, the mordacious and sarcastic Lee Friedlander.
The rise of the American sun, following the great war, with the heroic
photography of Ansel Adams and the post-Surrealism of Edward Weston, and with
all those following them, from Frederick Sommer to Minor White, from Robert
Frank to Garry Winogrand, from William Egglestone to Lee Friedlander, to name
only a few, all the way up until the last decades of the past century, finally
consolidated photographys place within the museum system, and subsequently
within public and private collections in America the MoMA in New York and in
San Francisco are good examples as well as in some more-farsighted collections in
countries of the Old Continent which were more sensitive than others to this art
form, a title nobody disputed any longer.
So, the meaning and aim of photographic collecting is eventually clarified, as is its
development from the 1800s to the present, when photography is now omnipresent, the
image of its own triumph, with the contemporary world flooded and perturbed by millions
of images which if not always photographic, do irrefragably lead back to photography
impacting anyone anywhere. They are the ultimate, if not on many occasions the only,
expression of the uncontrollable transformation of the world of globalisation forwards or
backwards, depending on our cultural and above all social viewpoints, that is, on the
perspectives rooted in one of the ethnic groups of belonging. And art today often with the
support of architecture- is fully immerse in this and other concerns.
Therefore, the question is: how to collect? What and when to buy? Maybe we could
go for the safe bet of purchasing only masterpieces with their high costs but safe
returns? Or we could, on the contrary, focus on a few artists guided by our personal
taste, without listening to concerns of gender, origin or age? Always reasoning at 360
degrees, around a precise subject but transversally, without any limits of time or
authors? Researching into a particular movement? A certain historical period, for
instance from the inception of photography until 1860, from the daguerreotype to the
albumen process? Perhaps we could partake in some of these suggestions, even
further delimiting the sphere to which we want dedicate the collection itself, refining
it later with travel photographs exclusively made in black and white only before
1960, or else making it only with albumen, ferrotypes and autochrome on the subject
matter of the city or the anonymous portrait.
Precisely, by paying attention to this new, heterogeneous and educated public, capable
of consuming at great speed and of re-elaborating old data with those which have been
The problem is no longer to do with contents. Perhaps never before were these so
evident that they almost become embarrassing, though under a permanent threat of
deflagration. If anything, in such a confusing period with such exhausted tones, it is in
the method where a photography collection can and probably must differentiate, put
a distance between itself and the other in art, thus underlining the meaning of what
it is accumulating. A collection theoretically involves a quest and that, in turn, implies a
choice. While that important and essential step is often delegated to the competence of
the curator of each individual public or private institution, it is nonetheless interesting
to underline how that clichd moment cannot, however, do without a method.
590
ENGLISH TRANSLATION
barely been digested, new collections, and or course existing ones, must undoubtedly
provide continuity to that policy of acquisitions, dialoguing with other disciplines,
including architecture, today an effective, pro-active player in contemporary art, and
sometimes even exceeding it by the quality and speed of the analysis in deciphering the
environmental mutations undergone by the contemporary landscape.
Paying special attention to the new generations of artists, to those who are today
around forty, the generational approach allows us to keep the substantial and formal
proposal of the collection fresh and always up-to-date, with the exploration of all the
arguments and tendencies practiced by contemporary photography today, from the
everyday family, acquaintances or workplace, and the alienation of private individuals
in society to the environment, nature and their increasingly evident contradictions, but
also to architecture, city planning, the landscapes of big cities changing by dint of racial
mutations and the unstoppable process of globalisation. In turn, each one of these
themes feeds off infinite sub-categories, today being explored by photography. The
institution may complete its program around them, enriching it with encounters and
debates which, taking the photographic image as a starting point, are interconnected
with other disciplines including sociology, city planning, anthropology, philosophy, etc.
Collecting is an infinite story, as is, on the other hand, the world we live it.
[...] collectors are inveterate list-makers, and all people who enjoy making lists are
actual or would-be collectors.
Collecting is a species of insatiable desire, a Don Juanism of objects in which each
new find arouses a new mental tumescence, and generates the added pleasure of
score keeping, of enumeration [...]
The list is itself a collection, a sublimated collection. One does not actually have to
own the things. To know is to have (luckily, for those without great means). [...]
What you like: your five favorite flowers, spices, films, cars, poems, hotels, names,
dogs, inventions, Roman emperors, novels, actors, restaurants, paintings, gems, cities,
friends, museums, tennis players just five. Or ten or twenty or a hundred.
For, midway through whatever number you settled for, you always wish you had a
bigger number to play in. Youd forgotten there were that many things you liked.
What youve done: everyone youve gone to bed with, every state youve been in,
country you visited, house or apartment youve lived in, school youve attended, car
youve owned, pet youve had, job youve held, Shakespeare play youve seen...
What the world has in it: the names of Mozarts twenty operas or of the kings and queens
of England or of the fifty American state capitals... Even the making of such lists is an
expression of desire: the desire to know, to see arranged, to commit to memory.
What you actually have: all your CDs, your bottles of wine, your first editions, the
vintage photographs youve purchased at auctions [...]2
1. Sontag, Susan: The Volcano Lover: A Romance (Picador, 2004, pp. 132-133).
2. Ibid., pp. 202-203.