1

Empremptes en el temps. Fragments identitaris del carcter americ. Huellas en el tiempo.

Fotografa Latinoamericana en la Coleccin CEDODAL. Castelln, Universitat Jaume I, 2008,
pp. 9-12. (Hay versin en valenciano, espaol e ingls). D.L. GR. 1654/2008


FOOTPRINTS IN TIME. IDENTITY FRAGMENTS OF THE LATIN
AMERICAN PEOPLE
Rodrigo Gutirrez Viuales
University of Granada

Invitation to look at photos were the words on the card photographer Grete
Stern used on the occasion of her first individual exhibition in Buenos Aires in 1943. It
seemed like a good idea to borrow her phrase to announce this exhibition of a selection
of photographs from the CEDODAL collection. In this case, we consider what is
expressed by a set of images which, although absolutely fragmentary in view of the
much more versatile and broad reality that Latin America is, can undoubtedly be
conceived as a series of landmarks scattered along a well-defined path. Signs that, each
one from its own place, talk to us about the Latin American people, about the history
behind them and on which they build their day-to-day existence, about their activities,
their culture, their festivities, their religiosity, their sense of progress and even their
recurrent neglect.

Insisting on something that is obvious the consideration of photography as one
of the great arts of our time is now common place. It is more interesting to think about
the reasons (commercial interests aside) for this attraction that photography holds for
our perception. The main reason may be its capacity to stop time in a world where the
frantic pace of life, combined with the omnipresence of all sorts of images (mostly in
motion), has weakened our capacity for calmed reflection. And what is more, it has
spoiled the possibility of giving enjoyment continuity, which has been outstripped by
the inability to assimilate things through the senses, dulled as they are after receiving so
many stimuli. Therefore, part of photographys attraction lies today in its freezing of
images: since we cannot stop, the photograph stops for us instead, and this becomes, in
short, an outlet towards a certain resistance to change, which is necessary and yearned
for.

The foundations of photographys emotional power lie, to a great extent, in that
calm which is intrinsic to the solidified image. Thus, in the silence of its contemplation,
we are allowed to scrutinise its every last detail, where something new will always
come up. The photograph will show use everything it wants, depending, of course, on
our own personal and biographical memory, and on our cultural world, which will set
guidelines and give these images their unique nature by activating internal and, in
general, scarcely superficial mechanisms.

If one of the requirements of art is the dialogue between artwork and audience,
there is no doubt that in photography this connection takes place in a special and very
intense way, due to the irresistible magnetism of a still image. This would be a clear
guideline in the consideration of photography as art (which a few still reject, or admit
reluctantly). In this domain, as occurs with so many old paintings, it matters little
whether the author has a name and surname, or whether the photograph belongs to the
long list of anonymous works that make up the collections of this genre. In photographs
2
we usually detect the artistic purpose, the search for certain highly studied framings,
light effects, carefully arranged poses. But photography as an art is also built up under
the mantle of fortuitousness, of accidental circumstances, and this spontaneity, this
act of chance, distinguishes it from other artistic expressions. And it is precisely here
where the view of the audience intervenes and plays a relevant role, as well as their
previous cultural background and aesthetic learning, be it as individuals or as part of a
group, to convert or understand an image as artistic expression. Sometimes many
years may go by before this transformation takes place.

The photographs gathered in this exhibition are divided into three large sections:
Scenes from Latin American culture, Rural tasks and Urban activities. This
classification shows great flexibility since photographs in one section could easily be
part of another one, and vice versa. In this way, they are threads of a global
understanding for these Footprints in time.

Within the first section, the scenes that make up the varied and broad cultural
reality of Latin America, we have included an iconic repertoire in which the landmarks
of the continents history mark out the existence of the contemporary inhabitant,
particularly concerning the two main historical periods before liberation, namely the
pre-Hispanic world and colonial period. Fragments of Inca ruins, as well as viceroyal
temples and residences, serve as the background for indigenous people, be they from
Peru, Bolivia or Mexico, and for the numerous expeditionaries that travelled across the
American continent from the nineteenth century on. They became immersed in their
landscapes, merged with their cultures, and immortalised firstly through oil painting,
watercolours and pictures, later through the lens the landscapes, the customs and the
architectural heritage that they came across.

The very same Latin American photographers, pioneers at the turn of the
twentieth century among them Melitn Rodrguez in Colombia, Arturo Wood Boote
in Argentina, Max Vargas, Manuel Mancilla and Martn Chambi in Peru, and Luis D.
Gismondi in Bolivia, all of them present in this exhibition would progressively break
new ground and clear the aesthetic way for later generations. These included other
distinguished artists represented in this exhibition, such as Ursula Bernath, Luis
Mrquez, Nacho Lpez, Esteban de Varona, Bernice Kolko and Ruth Lechuga in
Mexico, and Hans Mann y Montaa in Argentina. Plastic artists like Ral Anguiano, the
promoter responsible for one of the most memorable artistic expeditions in the last
century, taken to in the Lacandona region in 1949, and art historians such as the
Spaniard Enrique Marco Dorta, would provide through their trained eyes although
using the camera (which of course was not their main, or at least most important, tool)
a valuable insight into the rural and urban landscape, and on the continents Indian
population.

Anguianos fascination with Lacandonan tribes, which he would also
immortalise through drawing and the paintbrush, also portrays a sort of Arcadia lost in
time if we dare to look from our occidentalism, but one that is still present in several
although very scattered spots in the continent, especially in the case of uncontacted
peoples that from time to time come to light even today. The organisation of the
indigenous communities, their power structures and, above all, their appraisal of the
family unit as stem cells continue to set social trends that are still in force in rural and
urban domains. Photography, through most recent history, has been the main engraver
3
of the family as a whole and of its components as individuals. Family albums and the
boxes where elders have jealously kept and built up family memories contained in
photographs have usually been granted most emphasis, always as a way of constructing
a tradition over the years and the passing of generations. These are the original, basic
resources that enable each link in the chain to be perpetuated in the form of descendants
and ancestors of a common history, written essentially through images and whose story
must be accompanied by the oral tradition.

The anonymous look from inside, as well as the surprised eye of the other, left
evidence of the Latin American inhabitant, of the community, of the family, through
history. Apart from landscapes and artistic and architectural testimonies, faces and attire
stand out among the features that could be considered as elements of attraction in
photographing the Latin American reality. They are always a magnet for the lens, as are
scenes or situations that the foreigner usually calls surrealist but which, for a Latin
American, are, simply and plainly, realism. The design of the clothes and their lively
colours (even though we must imagine them in black and white photographs) is one of
the distinctive traits in most of those countries, and are still one of the most typical
attractions for visitors today. All this clearly demonstrates that from the old memories
of the traveller artist (in spite of the fact that the increased availability of knowledge
and information has somewhat diminished part of the mystery and fear of the unknown
that the voyageur used to have before setting out), there are still traces that allow
enjoyment to be derived from the same old interests and surprises, as well as many
more possibilities for recording things. These are the footprints that add up over time
and progressively accumulate life testimonies.

In this exhibition, one of the central themes, as mentioned above, is work the
focus of Latin American everyday life in both rural and urban settings. Although hints
are given in the first section of the exhibition, the second and third sections are devoted
to these themes, where memory is framed in public works employees taking their breaks
in the Argentinean province of Misiones and, further south, where it is reflected in
gauchos drinking mat immortalised at the end of the nineteenth century in the
middle of the Pampas and finally with a group of miners in Cananea (Mexico), in the
north, sitting around the table. The bitterest facet is established through the photograph
of the Huichol Indian in the trap, penalised for a misdemeanour at work or for stepping
out of line, which his superiors considered to be a crime; and through the group of
wetbacks waiting, in a thankless and uncertain situation, to emigrate, sitting in front of a
sign which reveals to them the impossibility of their dream coming true. The presence
of signs in photographs helps images in their task of speaking for themselves, as in the
above-mentioned case, or in the photograph at the end of the last section which shows a
metallurgical workers strike, also in Mexico.

The wide variety of labour testimonies is, as already mentioned, essential in this
exhibition which goes beyond the mere graphic representation of these activities to
reach immanence, essential spirituality. This is expressed by the image of workers, day
labourers and craftsmen, who proudly show their daily scenarios and their production,
whether essentially manual or obtained with the help of modern machines, signs of
progress. Handcrafts one of Latin Americas signs of identity means of transport,
ranging from the humble country cart to the sophisticated tractor brought by new times,
and the distribution and sales at markets, mark a life course which has remained over
time. All this is accompanied by the transformations of towns and buildings covering
4
the whole process, from their conception in architecture studios to the subsequent
activity of bricklayers.

Beyond these realities, an immutable presence over time in Latin American
culture is undoubtedly, with all its variations and adaptations, religiosity in all sorts of
expressions. Particularly relevant in popular spheres, transmitted from generation to
generation, which keep some aspects dating back to the pre-Hispanic period alive and
which incorporate models brought by the Europeans since the sixteenth century, is
religious expression, another of the appealing images that the iconographer (through
plastic arts, photography or other audiovisual media) can find and be surprised by in the
American continent. La fe de los excluidos (The faith of the excluded), a photograph by
Mexican Nacho Lpez, is a determined poem dedicated to the unshakable faith of the
peoples of America, who cling to it almost as if it were the sole hope, moved by the
need to have something to believe in, and protected by prayer as the driving force that
exorcises hardship. The long pilgrimages to temples on days of obligation and on the
others too and the survival of the evangelisation of natives in far away towns is still an
everyday occurrence in American society.

And to preserve memory, there they are, the everlasting, indelible testimonies of
photography as a vehicle of memories, a means to exorcise the past, as William Boyd
put it, to become definitive Footprints in time.