constructeur maison moderne aube

urban graphicsin latin american cities is one of the main linesof my "pop latino" works. the typography usedon cheap signs: "everything 2 pesos,""everything 1 peso." "1 peso hamburger." "we change dollars and euros." i'm greatly inspiredby this low-end typography. actually, for my latest show,i hired typographers, poster-makers in lima,to create my poster.

the term pop latino... i don't know if i invented it or if it was the idea ofjournalists or art critics to define the type of photosi started taking in the '90s. i'd gotten tiredof black-and-white photography so i started working in colour, using bright colours, influenced by advertising, like a sort of warholof underdevelopment.

the inca kola bottlewas the first piece i did characteristic of pop latino. it was the equivalent ofthe campbell's soup can of underdevelopment. what interested mewere the colours... and what could be calledthe "texture of underdevelopment." the "plastic tablecloth", as the argentinean filmmakerleonardo favio called it, when you eat in oneof those truck-stops

and your forearmsget stuck to the plastic tablecloth. this texture, this colour,is a sort of poetry that i'd like to develop. this stuff isn't well made. why botherif there's no market for it, it won't be preserved, and no one really cares about it? from rio grande southwards, people do what they want.

there are no more borders. in argentina,you find the same sort of graphics as in a market in sonora, mexico. in the discosin the peruvian jungle, in iquitos, all the patrons wearfc barcelona shirts. the real barcelona team shirt is the counterfeit one, the one worn in latin america,in iran, in saudi arabia. it's the one that costs â¤5.

the typography of fc barcelona can be seen inthe bars of constituciã³n, my neighbourhood in buenos aires, in the markets of paraguay, in the ver-o-peso market hallin belã©m. the plastic goodsin latin-american markets, the colours of plasticsold in latin-american markets is the texture... which defines my work.

after 4 days in paris,i get bored. i can't wait to go home. recently, i said to... i think it was marcos lã³pez... "to me, taking photosis almost like breathing." my photographs from the '80s were mostly black-and-white, almost all of them. but i liked working in colour.

i had two nikons, one loaded with black-and-white, the other with colour filmthat i used less often. i saved the colour filmfor really special things. i really loved colour. perhaps becauseit was a rarity for me and colour film was expensive. the siesta argentina series came to me, as an idea,

as a concept, in 2002. it was...yes, in 2002, right afterthe terrible economic crisis of december 2001. actually, we were stillin the economic crisis. people were desperate. times were hard. my personal "antidote"was to go out and take photos of what i saw every dayin various neighbourhoods:

shops going out of business. the little neighbourhood shops with 8m66 storefronts, composed of a shop window,a door, and another shop window. they were all similar, all symmetrical,but all different, and all had their shutters down. the lowered shuttersmeant they'd closed. the closing of a bakery, a clothing boutique,

of all these little shops, like the closureof the middle class. so that is what i did: i photographed what i could. i tried to find such places and to record them. i had no ideawhere it would lead, but i did itquite obsessively. i continued until mid-2003.

that's when i decided to present them in a gallery,and especially, in a book. i wanted them to be a book. i particularly like when there appearsa sort of dynamic, or geometry of the image, when you first perceivethe photo as a shape before seeing its content. "siesta" because many thoughtit'd soon be over.

the economy would improveand it'd be over. thus, the title siesta argentinarefers to the afternoon nap,a short interlude. it's not an eternal dream,nor death. the crisis was terrible,but we'd get through it. it was a metaphor of that crisis. i was the union representativein a telephone company. i'd worked as a phone technicianfor many years. our union was very small.

we made our posters ourselves. we designed themand posted them. for these posters,what mattered most was to definea typographical identity. our printing methodsweren't very modern, they were traditional,like in the 19th century. we created a typographical poster for the exhibitionat the centro de arte y communicaciã³n entitled violencia.

we printed it 70x100cm,the largest size we could make, "violence" was written in huge letterson the installation. my artistic work was varied:i did video, performance, and most of all, posters. the graphic arts always fascinated me. the history of the revolution... almost disappeared forever. in 1976, our dream died. rather, part of our dream:revolution was no longer possible.

i still think the revolutionshould have happened. i used graphic art to expressthe dream that i had, the dream of revolution. whenever i can, i create a workconnected to this idea of revolution, whenever i have an opportunityto show work. this is my class photo taken when i was 13. this was the first photograph takenof my middle school classmates. that's me.

it was during music class, at the colegio nacionalde buenos aires. we were all students there in 1967. i was 13.it was the first year, during 6th period, the first afternoon class. it's a photoi had in my albums, my personal photo albums. when i returned to argentinaafter many years in exile, 14 years,

i wanted to get in touchwith my old classmates. we met,we talked about our lives and what had happenedto the others. there were two,my friend martin, and claudio,who are circled in red, faces barred... who'd been "disappeared"under the military dictatorship. so i took out this photo i'd saved and enlarged itto have the portrait of my classmates.

on the 20th anniversary of the coup,in 1996, we went to the high schoolto talk about the "disappeared." i took out this photoand added these notes in which we tellabout our lives. "eric is an actor.he lives in madrid." "i'm a photographer,and i miss martã­n." "martã­n was the first to disappear.he never knew his son, pablo, who is 30.he was my best friend." "she married a boy from the schooland their children go here too."

it's this little personal history that we told to the current studentsof the school, the ones there today, or who studied there a few years agobecause we've gone several times. it was a way for us to speakin a rather personal manner as alumni, to this new generationabout what happened in our time. there are two holes,two holes in the group. those two holeshave marked us all for life.

my brother fernando, in a certain way, was at the originof the project buena memoria for in order to speakof these "disappeared," i had to talk aboutthe one in my family. my brother was "disappeared"in august 1979, many years ago. recently, at a trial,my mother bore witness and it lightened her burden. his "disappearance" has alwaysbeen very painful.

in 1973, when i created perã³n vence the "p" and the "v"were the most famous symbols of the city of la plata. there wasn't a wall,nor a building... even on the edge of the sidewalks, you could see the "p" and the "v" which had various meanings. for some it was "perã³n vuelve"or "perã³n will return",

for the general was in exileat that time. for others, it meant:"viva perã³n". to me, it was "perã³n vence"("perã³n will conquer"). it was obvious... that he would win, that he'd have the courage to do itlike many people said at that time. transformaciones de masas en vivo is a group of 8 photos which includes perã³n vence.

the project was conceived at the beginningas an aesthetic work. i never considered it political. its aim was purely aesthetic:using the body as an artistic medium and forming various shapes. the story oftransformaciones de masas en vivo, of this series of photos, is very particular. when i look at it today,

i can't help but feel sad, guilty, even. but... it began as a collective work. when we started,it was a game. the young people had fun,they laughed. it became a work of artin the form of photos. first they were shown at the cayc, then they were exhibitedaround the world.

at the same time, the reality of the young people who participated, art history studentsat the national college, these 18-year-olds, took another path. me, i had my work of art, shown around the world. they, or at least,most of them, had turned to activism.

they joined the peronist youth movement. consequently, while i... profited from my work of art,they'd become militants. at the cycle's end,the work had been forgotten, and they'd disappeared. some of them, according tothe director of the national college, were murdered,or rather, "disappeared". i see this as a cycle: it started as a work of art,then became a game.

after that, it reallybecame a work of art. and the participants...the "material" of this artwork, were, in part, exterminated. and finally, the workentered the art market. in the end, there are people who buywhat cost the lives of so many. i believe that to describethe art scene of rosario without thinking of buenos airesis absolutely impossible. what we produce hereis legitimised in buenos aires.

bocanada isa difficult word to translate. it's when there's nothingin your mouth but it's also a puff of air. it's a gesture so that afterwardssomething can happen. we feel something,or we scream, or we eat,but we do something. that open mouth is a call,it's a demand which can't be ignored.

that's how bocanada started,with an everyday gesture. i had a spoonand i saw my mouth reflected in it. and i thought:"who's eating who?" does the mouth eat me? or the opposite? which is the worst? which is the strongest? it's the constant power struggleof daily life. the first version of bocanada

consisted of a series of photos of people with their mouths wide open. i printed them.at the time, i used the process of heliography. for example, with heliography, the image develops when put in contactwith ammonia fumes. i'd made myself this little device, an object that gave off

little "bocanadas,"puffs of ammonia, and the image appeared like smoke. you really felt likeyou were making it appear... that i made the imageof the object appear. and i like that.i like to make a piece that way. to speak of tucumã¡n arde, for me, is to speak of a groupand a process. you can't take tucumã¡n arde on its own,as if it were an action

that came out of nowhere.it is inseparable from a group,from a context, and froma specific moment in history, which is the late '60s,and 1968. and most of all, it concerns argentina,with what happened due to the military government which caused ceaseless contestation

by the entire population faced with a system of censorship and repression. tucumã¡n arde was conceived as an action with 4 phases. first, an investigative phase, to inform ourselves about the situation in tucumã¡n, especially the situationin the sugar factories

and sugar plantations, the monocultureof the tucumã¡n province. the region had becomean industrial pole, one of the most importantin the country and it employedlots of workers. consequently, it had a major effect,on the social level, when the government decidedto close these factories. from the start, the idea was to create a workor an action to denounce

in the mediawhat was happening in tucumã¡n. the media reportedsugar factories being closed but never spokeof the consequences of these closureson the social level. so the plan was to denounce this, but to denounce it here, not in tucumã¡n,but here where we lived, in order to make it known. this incited us

to produce work which expressedthe situation of these people. then there was an advertising campaign. after that, the exhibition. and then the voyage to tucumã¡n to document the situation there. i consider working withthe tucumã¡n arde collective as one of the most important moments for me,in terms of my education. i'd say that

my artistic and political training came from that group. i also made my best friends there and it's where i met my husband. i didn't want to get rid ofthese documents and this material which, at the time,had no value except for its sentimental value. i think people began to take interest

when some historians or researchers like ana longoni or guillermo fantoni... ana is from buenos airesand guillermo is from rosario. they started to investigatethese events. all the other members of the group had destroyed the materialin their possession: photos, documents,manifestos, and so on. apparently, this is the sole remaining archive

of all those actionsor those productions. i believe this is whyit's so important. these are the only documentsthat bear testimony of all those actions. when i... left, or rather,when we left germany, i was 1 year old. it's not part of my experience. they told me about it,but i don't remember it.

i opened my eyes,nose, and ears in uruguay. i have no contact with germany. it was in uruguaythat i learned to think. my childhood memories,the smells, the street names, everything thatdefines a personality, all came from uruguay. i left when i was about 20.

i had a guggenheim scholarship and i went to studyin the united states. i had no intention of leaving, i simply wantedto study and learn. in uruguay,i was a student militant at art school. the general attitude therewas anti-imperialist and anti-american. what was interesting was to observe the situationfrom inside "the boot"

instead of underneath it.that's the metaphor i had in mind. in this context of economic crisis,oppression and repression, photography,before the arrival of photoshop, photography's credibilitycarried a lot of weight. credibility was the bridge where we experimentedor created situations in which we revealedsomething true, but in a skewed way,in order open viewers' minds.

this process combining of reality, credibility,and documentation, even if they werehypothetical documents, was very usefulin the process of raising awareness. this was very particularin latin america where this process was separated from photography and notably,socially engaged photography, in the hegemonic centres. socially engaged photographyin hegemonic centres

aims at documenting reality. "this is poverty,this is misery, "this is hunger.here is its documentation." with conceptual strategies, sometimes it's nothing morethan superimposing a phrase upon a reality. neither of them is true,but mixing them creates a documentary evocation which is new,which didn't exist.

and that... is much more characteristic of the cultureof that decade than the imageof a peasant hauling water. it was another option of identity that was badly misunderstood at the same period. the christmas series came out at the same timeas the publication of the photo

of che's corpse, as the deaths of marighella,and camilo torres, and the myth nixon was trying to promote. what really interested me was to see what would happenif i also privileged content, meaning to present certain information as content and do it in such way that it'd suffice for the wholewithout my intervention.

the reference to christmasin the title is ironic.i wanted to express a sort of terrifying martyrdom and oppression in a festive context, but a holiday that is alsoa symbol of colonisation. it was like a culture shock between a foreign element and the demand torespect that element.

christmas symbolises all this. anyway, as a jew,i never got presents, which made it even worse. all this cultural significance is in the titleof the series. it's something personal.it's just my own opinion, but that doesn't matter. regularly, i... i've nothing else to say.

i was never interestedin being a professional artist, being obliged to make artevery single day. i only make artif i want to, and that suits me. in addition...how to say it? i don't like making art. for me, it's not a pleasure, it's a necessity.i have no other choice. but if i don't feel this need,

this imperious need to create, i prefer not to. i don't like the art system. i have a big problemwith art as a... cultural industry. it's a wide-ranging debate. but this "cultural industry," i don't want to be part of it. so...

i make art when... i'm like a drug addictwho gets clean and then relapses. that's how i work. regularly, i get clean. i stay off art. the escena de avanzadawas already over. it was named that by nelly richardto describe what had happened

years before. i worked in association with carlos leppeand nelly richard for 4 or 5 years. we became friends.we worked and lived together. around 1975 or 1976, the atmosphere changed.we saw things in a new manner. a sort of avant-garde appeared. it was us.

we wanted to attack the dictatorship using its usual meansof action and communication. between 1976 and 1980, when i created these landscapes, was a very intense period. the years flew by. i believe a large partof the artist that i am, that i was, or that i had been,was defined during those 3 years.

its title wasn't always ocho paisajes.i don't remember the original title. i learned so much during these discussionson art, on language. it allowed me to refine my referencesand my "tools," my linguistic tools. i began integrating things:photos with painting, and even other materials,

like tar, which i put on the photos. i layered photos. then there was text,which i'd never used before. the idea of text was... to treat it like an image. when i speak of "still life," it's the concept of the still life as compared to photography

and the resulting tensionis what interests me. working with this tensionbetween elements which aren't only linked,they are in conflict with one another. one interpretation could be:it's the tension in the air. that's what life waslike in chile. tense. the origin of these paintingsis completely accidental. i was doing tests with paper. i'd put paint on one part,then fold the paper so the paintpressed on another part.

but i'd thrown them away. it didn't interest me, until i was visited by two directorsof the museum of modern art in cali who wanted to organize a show. they asked me about my work and suddenly, i had a brainwave: i could fold these sheets of paper and mail them.

i'd already made postal art. they thought it was a great idea. they asked me to mail them17 works. so i finished the paintingsand went to the post office, in 1983, or 1984, i don't remember. the envelopes were very simple.i wrote a few things on them and mailed them. when i went to hang the works, as soon as i got off the plane,i ran to the museum.

i asked to see the 17 paintings. i was afraid they'd been ruined. but the 17 airmail paintingswere intact, spread out on a table. and at that precise moment, what happened is that... i realized i could exhibitanywhere in the world for free, that my work...it was a real split

from all my previous work, and it was an accident. i'd never thoughtabout the problem. that's how it happened. it was like a revelation. i'd never dreamedof doing such a thing. if i hadn't done it,i'd probably be in the hospital. the project for the show indicated that...

the worksshould be "historical". so i wondered, "what does thathave to do with me?" what was the relationship between me, my airmail paintings, and the fact that they ask me for works i created in 1979, not airmail paintings, but ones composedof text and images

and which were historical? returning to what i said earlier, what is an historical work? an historical work is one that was datedwhen it was made. thus, it becomes "historical." conversely, a work withouta set date of completion is not historical. it wanders like a lost soul.

what do lost souls do? where do they begin?where do they end? they move from place to place.you know why? for a reason that is essentialto airmail paintings: this painting has no home. metaphorically, it wanders constantly searching for a home. when it finds one, it's only temporary.

it must leave itto seek another one. this movement is the time, or the path,of the airmail paintings. you could call it "the unsuccessful quest for a home." which means, the character... the best comparison it that of lost souls.

the newspapers are works created as an experiment that started in 1966,unless i'm mistaken. first, they were works executed witha certain freedom of expression and movement. they were done in pencil directly on a sheet of newspaper. the idea was to transform

this printed reality into something more creative, something more poetic, something which allowedimmediate communication like a newspaper. i had certain... i was influenced by the political situationin which we lived in brazil and the worldduring that period.

at the time,these newspapers were printed in the same shopas the newspaper, on fabriano paper, which we then reworkedwith indian ink or acrylic paint. while pursuing these experiments, we became aware of a materialthat we call "flan". "flan" is the french word for this material.

this materialwas a necessary step in printing a newspaper. it's almost an artisanal process. to be soldin the streets and newsstands, a newspaper had to pass throughthis "flan" stage. i'd go to the print shopat dawn to salvage these "flans" and bring them back to my studiowhere, for my work, i also inked these "flans".

this was decisivefor an entire series of works which today are considered historical, but which held for me,at the time, the importance of a true political act, and most of all,an existential act: the creation of something that i thought was able to contribute...

...to the tribe. it was a period that was very... it wasn't just politics,truthfully, it was a whole dream ofprogress, an avant-garde that was emerging,for everyone. rock festivals. jimi hendrix, janis joplin... bob dylan!and all the others. this thing that was happening,this flow, all the good, positive energy.

long-haired young people. all this stuff,it really attracted us, it inspired us, we were passionate about it. so the avant-gardeand all these works moved forwardon the same paths. a hendrix guitar solocould be a huge influence. all this incited usto stay here, in brazil,to fight against

this state of exception, this state of violence,imposed on us for 40 years, which is the military dictatorship. as you probably imagine, i've had a long career path, at the end of which,in my work, i'm starting to... probably influenced bymy husband, a geographer, but it's not geography that is geological, nor regional.

i'm starting to realize that in order for my messages to transform themselves into art, they need... not a form,like an abstract form, but for me to fallinto a different situation, which is geography.i will take a system that i didn't invent myself. o pã£o nosso de cada dia

i know that'sa new testament expression. if i refer to it, it's like giving thanksfor having bread, but it is not by bread alone that man may live. our ideas, during the period of the exceptional military regime, were truly censured in every domainof the cultural world.

so in the title,there is really... it's irony,but irony... that criticises. the hollowed-out bread represents the hollowed-out worldin which we live. when i beganmaking these works, how to reach with an image, what is central,what is peripheral?

this referred, in a more obvious way,to the way we are considered peripheral,in the hegemonic sense, to the art world. i made the image go from darkness to light, then i placed the word "periphery"on the light side, and "centre" on the other side, the dark side.

for i thought: "if i place, on a surface, "an image of the lunar surface, "i formulate a certain critical conceptionon the political situation. "i behave like someoneon the surface of the moon "who can saywhatever they please." when we're no longer on earth... it's a bit like the people whoclimb on a soapbox in hyde park and who can expressall their opinions.

they'll never be arrested. i think that what always fascinated meabout photography is precisely its capacity to aim the viewfinderat what existed physically, in the world: an event, an instant, that has beencaptured and frozen. that image containsa parcel of truth which barthes emphasised as:

"this was." we cannot challengethe fact that it happened, because of the primary relation between the imageand what was captured, visually, through photography. i'm talking about analog photography. and yet, in that image,what attracts me in photos is everythingwe can't say about them, everything the photos don't say.

it's so magicalhow they talk about that instant, but they say much moreabout all the rest, everything thatisn't present in it. photography is incomplete by nature, because it is part of a story,or in any case, it could be part of one, it demandsthat we finish a story it has left untold.

this frozen instantis almost... for me, a photo is everythingexcept what we see in the image. i think this is where my fascination and interestin images lies. to talk about everythingnot present in that instant, and everythingnot in that instant depends on the viewer'sinvolvement with the image. it's what the viewer,the person seeing this image,

an image that, most often,isn't even mine, it's what they do with it,which is similar to my work. they'll wonder about everythingthat is not in the image in the same way i wonder about everythingthat is not in the image at that momenti have the desire, the impulse,to work with that image, to use that image. i actually count onthe viewer having a story to project onthe image i'm offering.

for cicatriz,everything started in 1995. i heard abouta supposed penitentiary museum in sã£o paulo, in what used to becarandiru penitentiary. i got authorizationand went to visit it. i realized it wasn'ta museum at all, just a heap of crates, abandoned to spiders and roaches,

filled with negatives dating from the 1910suntil the 1950s, i suppose. they'd been storedfor purposes of identification, or perhaps for scientific use. i offered to organize the material, to archive it and to createthe idea of a penitentiary museum, and in exchange, i could usethis material, these photos, mostly photos of tattoos,

for my own work,because that's what interested me then. in 1969, the museum of modern artin rio de janeiro presents,at the "salon de la boussole", trouxas ensangã¼entadas. of course,the work caused a certain stir, but was accepted by the commission and the jury as well. the show exposedchunks of wrapped meat, and later, after the exhibition,

i put this material, these bundles of meat, in the gardenof the modern art museum, in a setting that was bothinside and outside the museum. belo horizonte hosted this workin 1970, which was included, withregistro, in the show information, at moma in new york, and then in paris,when i decided to send myself into exile to follow someone i was in love with.such is life!

after that, when i returned,i joined the cairn group, a group of artists working in their studios, and i made livro de carne, based on the first work, the trouxas ensangã¼entadas of 1969, but with a passagethat's in the notebook rodapã©s de carne, that i also made in parisbefore livro de carne

but in a sort of "anonymous" way because i never showed it, although i'd done registro. back then and even today,despite my numerous shows, it's very hard to find placesthat will show a work like this. i'm the son of a diplomat, so i've always been, in a certain way,an outsider. not an outsider without roots,

but the countries in which i lived, argentina, portugal, switzerland, new york... i lived in those places with my parents. this taught me that first of all, the concept of nationality and this chauvinismwhich drives one to fight for their country, is bullshit.it's ridiculous.

what made me change... i feel like i belong to something much bigger. there are no nationalities. there are only personalities. each individual has a personality determined by his birth,by his parents, his grandparents. this is importance.

it should be, but it must not become an excuse to fight with others, because "we're better than them," like a soccer game,brazil vs. argentina. "we're better than them." it's idiotic. the question of violence in brazil is a bit like in american westerns.

at one time, i worked... it was in the style of john ford. it was difficult. immediate. even today,it's exceptional work. my work, in bahia, dealt with peoplehunting for emeralds. visually, it was totally a western, hats and all. the question of sexuality

in brazilian prostitution was already addressed in 1972. it was a kind of prostitution that wasn't perverse. that almost seemed family-style. see what i mean? when i made pelourinho in 1979, i'd just finished an assignmentfor geo magazine on street children

and i saw that in recife, it was very rough,also in sã£o paulo, as well as in rio, while in bahia,it was different because the question of prostitutionwas handled differently. it was almost like a family business. it was something... in bahia, sexuality is very important.

it can't really beconsidered prostitution, even if it is prostitution and causes serious health problems for the women. i took photos in the daytime, during moments of downtime. the series includedseveral types of work: the female nude, art history,

woman as a symbol of the supreme power of good in the history of humanity. i am someone who believes that woman is earth, the basis of survival in this world, and that man is destruction.

i don't know who the audience is. who is it?i don't know. people who comefrom various places, who open their minds.certain identify with it. others hate it.while still others are like friends,female or male. the audience doesn't exist. the audience must not exist.

you should create a work as it were a rocket destined to the moon. then people will open themselves. i don't deal with the public. i don't take them into account. i do what i have to do. afterward, people dowhat they want with it. no one confronts their audience.

except perhaps... american filmmakers. i'll be very sincere: when i made this work, i never thought of showing itas an artwork. it never crossed my mind. as i already said, it all goes backto my childhood. in hungary,in 1944,

the germans,the nazis, created ghettos. my father was jewish. later, he was deported, and like the rest of my family,he died in the concentration camps. and they all were tattooed with numbers: on the chest

and on the arm. and so... conceptually, this work also shows people marked by numbers. except that my father's family died with those marks, murdered by the germans.

whereas this work of marking the yanomami was to save them. it was so they could live. thus, it was fundamental for me. i arrived in brazil in 1955 after growing up in transylvania,in hungary. when i arrived in brazil,

i fell in love with the country. i started travelling through brazil,here and there. my first visitto a group of indigenous people was to the carajã¡ indiansin central brazil. after various experiencesvisiting indigenous peoples, i started taking photos.it was during this period. i'd never photographedbefore that. i used the languageof photography

as a way to communicate for i didn't speak portuguese and obviously,didn't speak the indigenous languages either. after stayingfor over a month in the amazonand in various places, i arrived in manaus, where i heard about the mysterious death of a priest

who worked withthe yanomami indians. to tell the truth,i only stayed there a week. i never did find outhow that man died. i left, but not before gettingto know the yanomami a bit. that's what really mattered because that's wheni decided that i'd come back to stay with the yanomami, for as long as necessary to understandand get to know those people.

at that time, in 1974, construction was startingon a road that passed throughyanomami territory. it turned out to be a tragedyfor the yanomami, putting them in contactwith totally unknown things, especially diseases. hundreds and hundredsof indians died at that time. that's when i was there. so we organized,a small group of three,

a trip to yanomami territory to start a public health project. it was in this period, in order to work efficiently, we started to identify the indians. we managed to photograph and establish a medical recordfor each person. one of the advantages of being an artistwho wasn't trained academically,with its dogmas,

its writings, and so on, is that, in my case, i can make use of any language thatpleases me: theatre, music, literature. i'm most interested in imageryand after that, language. i'm fascinated by philology. i speak 6 languagesand i'm a keen reader. over 25 years ago,i had the luck to marry

a great cookwho also has a literature degree. we published a magazine which for yearswas the only one of its kind. lourdes, the perfect dictatorand intrepid cook, and marco, thought we should includea comic book in the center spread. it took mea year to make it. it was a sort of fotonovela.they'd fallen out of fashion. it was the ideal medium forel hospital del horror. the script was by armando vega-gil,

one of the foundersof a mexican rock band which recently broke up:botellita de jerez. it was directed by lourdes hernã¡ndez fuentes. and the photography was doneby the great tim ross. and we were the actors,the team at the magazine. we called ourselves "los commensalesdel crimen", ("partners in crime"). it's full of humour.it's a 2-page fotonovela, the two centre pages. since i was small,

i've confronted the latin aspect of america. i managed to develop,and continue to do so, strong latin-american sympathies. i'm against putting capital letters on "latin america". "latin" should not be capitalized because it is simply an adjective, like beautiful america, green america,

prosperous america, sad america, poor america, rich america, latin america,anglo-saxon america. if we say "latin america,"we should also say anglo-saxon america, french america, african america, and all the americas. although we can't say indian america. it's practically a pleonasm.we have no connection with india

here on this continent. it's also a huge linguistic error. in mexico, it's politically incorrect to use the word "indian" to speakof first nations, as canadians say, or native peopleswho are absolutely as native asthe scots in europe, the basques, the irish, the sicilians. they are the native peoplesof the continent. i could add something:

the term "latin america," don't forget,was coined by france, bonapartist france.the french wanted to draw this continentinto their political and economic sphere. they gave it this name. north americanshad no problem adopting it. it's the only continent that is plural. we don't say "asias""europes" or "africas" so why say "americas"?

it's a mystery. i received my artistic trainingat the national school of fine arts in the '90s. it was a very particular time. it was during the most bloody momentof the dictatorship of alberto fujimori at the end of the '90s. the place, too, for the school is locatedin lima's historic centre, two blocks from the government palaceand one block from the legislative palace.

thanks to this school,i was confronted with the reality of my country.there were often people:miners, peasants, who came to camp in limafor several days. it was during this timethat the la cantuta massacre occurred, an affair that caused quite a stir. the story managed to get out... from inside the army,the information was leaked to the media.it allowed us

to identify the ones who did it. things went much furtherthan ever before. this affair really grabbed the media's attention. every day,in the morning papers, we discovered a new visual element:a key, or a scrap of charred notebook. ten peoplehad been held prisoner then clandestinely executedby a paramilitary group.

the army's involvementwasn't revealed until later. following a government investigation, the personal effects were returnedto the families, but in a manner that expresseda certain negligence, even a sort of provocation. they had placed the objectsin evaporated milk boxes. at the time,these boxes were often used to store stuff, for transporting things,

they were used as bassinets,or wastebaskets. when i noticed this detail, and many others, i thought it was the perfectraw material for a series of works. evaporation evokes disappearance. also, the brand name "gloria" had religious overtones. i transformed"milk" into "people". a slight modificationfull of meaning.

i used these boxes as raw materialin my work for 2 years. they're the ones on display here. one of them consisted of... recuperating several to cut holes in them. the original exhibition,entitled historia, had 5 parts,if i remember correctly. one of themwas a series of photographs taken in classrooms

in peru,lima or cuzco, in old schools, during classeson peruvian history. i snuck into classrooms and photographedfrom the back, trying to capture the momentswhere the professor teaching the class wrote something,then erased it, while lecturing ona chapter of history.

i wanted to capture these moments.i find them important. it's important to be awarethat peru was the main viceroyaltyof south america. it was extremely repressivewith a powerful government. it was here that the whole structureof the region was formed. and it's this social structure that... to me, it's one of the themes, fundamental even today,

and it's linkedto the colonial heritage and the post-colonial experienceof our lives today. the photos in the historia show were photos that had originally been developedusing traditional processes. they were developed in a lab, black-and-white negativeswith gelatin silver prints. in the historia del per㺠series,the images underwent fairly extensive treatment

at my hands.i had to decide how i wanted to presentthese images. it drew onmy personal photography experience. i did a masters in photographyin the united states. for me, it was heaven:i had access to a photo lab and that was quite exceptional. this is visible in historia because i went to the lab and i decided thatthese images

should conveya sort of simulation and seduction,like a blackboard. the old ones havea certain velvety texture which makes you want to touch them.that's what i sought. i printed them on matte paperto simulate that texture. i darkened themusing a very complex process. i dodged, i darkened, i burnt, i raised the contrast. i finally managedto simulate white chalk

appearing,or even emerging from, a blackboard. the people that we see are the professors and studentswho suffered from that darkness. we're not sure if they are sinking intoor emerging from the image. i like that from a distance,they look like black frames which remind us of slates.as we draw nearer, the image reveals information. i was born in a town

called talarain the piura region on the northern coast of peru. i happened to be born there because my parentswere there for work. i only lived there for the first 10 monthsof my life, but i know thatwe travelled a lot on the pan-american highwayto visit family in lima. i don't remember these trips

but i guess that explainsmy fascination for travelling, for speeding down the highway, but also for the great open spaces, arid and flat,that characterized those trips. for my work, in 1996, i drove all the way to tumbes, the last townbefore ecuador.

when i arrived in limaafter this trip, i realized i had images i'd never thought of before, something was starting to take shape. these works were finally entitledpunto ciego. a few months after finishing the punto ciego project, i took the pan-american southward. during this trip,in 1998,

i noticed little piles of stonesover a stretch of several kilometres. there were spacedabout 200 or 300 meters apart. these piles of stoneswere grouped into strange shapes. sometimes,there was only one stone. they all bore inscriptions, numbers and letterswhich probably indicated, i suppose, topographical dataor property limits.

literally translated,the quechua word "pirca" means "wall". i believe that this ideathat the wall, the "pirca", defines something also impliesthat the word serves to indicate a sign,in a larger sense. what i found by the highwayduring this trip south were pircas with signsthat were impossible to translate. i created a serieswith water-filled cubes in which images,formed of charcoal powder, floated.

the images that floated, formed with charcoal powder,were or more aptly, are,during the shows... they are very... inclined to become damagedor altered for they haveno stable support. the images are instable. the concept of lacrimarios

is a water-filled cube,completely enclosed, in which the endless cycle of evaporation, condensation,and precipitation takes place. the water that evaporatesthrough the charcoal powder doesn't alter the image but when water condensesat the top of the container, the drops fall, so with time,the image is damaged. it deterioratesuntil becoming unrecognisable.

what motivated these works where those articles that appear in newspapers, generally a small photoaccompanied by a few words. these articles relate terrible tragedies. these are extremely sad stories presented so that they are visible,yet at the same time, invisible. what interested mewas the idea of memory, of forgetting,and the absence of memory.

i tried to approach this subjectfrom the viewpoint of the instant. walter benjamin saidthe instant we capture an image,it becomes historical. it is this instant which can be transformedinto a memory or not, which can become part of historyor not. this really sums up my ideas on the question of memory. in this work,

the charcoal powder,which is the dye, the pigment,produces the image on an unstable support,water, which is calm but very susceptible to a change, a movement,due to the drops, the falling drops. i created another work.it is an image that floats,and as the water evaporates,

as time passes,the water level diminishes. the image,once the water is totally gone, the image appearson the bottom of the container. at that instant, when the imageisn't on a fixed support, it is not a documentation, it is not a memory.it is simply there, in a latent state. the instanthas not yet been formed.

what first caught my attentionwas the visual phenomena of the streets: walls coveredwith letters and writing, sometimes legible,sometimes not. i had the impression... it was already the past,it'd be gone tomorrow. curiously, whether it be here,in another town, or another country, it is the same everywhere. there were pre-established frameworks.

i realized latin fireat the end of the '70s. i made that series here, in cali, and later elsewhere,on the walls of mexico city. but that series of posters,printed on cheap paper, like crepe paper,that was here. what i liked was the disorder among the letters and also the contribution of those who glued the postersin neat lines,

and those who later torn them down,or the wind. it switches from collage to dã©collage. i found all that extraordinary, that tangle of strange shapes. i didn't understand why this disturbed law and order. "post no bills""posting forbidden." i find it much more beautiful, all these letters mixed together,

these incomprehensible phrases,than dirty walls. i came to caracasin january 1955. i worked as an architectural photographer with the architect carlos raãºl villanueva. i also travelled through venezuela, especially the interior. today people saythere are two venezuelas. it's true,especially in terms of politics and ideology.

but this wasn't always the case.i noticed it the day i arrived. i arrived by shipand the first thing you see is the port of la guaira. on one side, there are cranes,ocean liners, cargo shipsfilled with goods. the homes facing them were shacksthat looked like nativity scenes. they looked just likethe little stable in a nativity scene,lambs sheltering under a palm tree.

then there wasthe highway to caracas. for the time,it was an impressive infrastructure, very modern. but 3 km after that,in baruta, which is now partof the district of caracas, you came face-to-facewith extreme poverty. in cuba, i abandoned photographingcontemporary architecture to start a major workon havana and popular architecture in cuba.

after cuba, i went to italy,then i returned to venezuela. through a contacti'd made in cuba, i was commissioned to do a studyon latin american architecture: pre-columbian, colonialand contemporary. so i started working, mostly in the capital cities. armed with my medium format camera, a 6x9 or a 6x6, i did my bestto photograph buildings

with the idea of capturing beautiful and modern architecturein latin america. but the realitythat always surrounded me was not modern at all. so, in parallelwith these architectural photos of buildings and so on, i began photographingwhat went on around these buildings. this gave birth to another book,

para verte mejor, amã©rica latina. from there, i believeit was the first edition which presentedan overview of the continent. that impressed me. it was my first contact with the cultural and social worldof the big cities of latin america. at the start of the '70s, i had a better mastery

of the cameraand the darkroom. we got together,a bunch of photographers, when we were all starting to put togetherour first projects. there was ricardo armas,luis brito, jorge vall, alexis perez-luna, and myself. our "eye" was what we had in common.we were interested in the same subjects. in 1976,we organized

an exhibition calleda gozar la realidad. the title was ironic, it meant "enjoy reality"when our reality was that of poverty,street people, the poor and so on. with this exhibition, we toured the entire country.it started in barcelona, then went to mã©rida,and many other cities. for two years,it moved from city to city,

from high schoolsto cultural centres, to museums... often, when we started working, we vied between usto capture the most interesting signs. everywhere we went,we were constantly alert, on the look-outfor something. in mã©rida, for example,there was an ad campaign

which said,"mã©rida is yours, come visit" and students had graffitied,"mã©rida is cool, everyone screws," like another sloganto attract tourists. this one was taken at a military basein la guaira. i don't know who rosita was, probably a womanthe entire regiment screwed. we realized that most of us had photos of signs

among the photos we'd taken. it was 1977. that's what struck us, the creativity and humourof the venezuelans. they knew howto make themselves heard. i got into photography in 1964. i was 17. thanks to my family,i got a job at korda studios. they needed

an assistant,like all studios do. that's where alberto korda worked.a great photographer, renowned in cubaas one of the best. thus, i had a chance to learnfrom an excellent master. in 1968, the cuban governmentclosed the studio because it was a private business and all private businesseshad to close. so i lost my job and got a new onein printing,

at cuba internacional magazine which was like paris match or lifeor o cruzeiro, in brazil. that's how i learned the ropes of cuban press and startedtravelling throughout the country. i always noticed the propaganda billboards whose messages were sometimesin contradiction with reality. at other times,i found them interesting

because they reflecteda certain moment in history. lots of these imageswere conserved for yearsbecause we didn't have enough hindsight. but 30 or 40 years later, they tell a story. they illustratemy country's historic moments, moments that were sometimes tragic,sometimes amusing, even a bit absurd,depending on the case. what i liked was the wayindividuals appropriated

certain official recommendations. the result was sometimes absurd,like at the psychiatric hospital of havana where there was a mural,fashionable at the time, which celebratedthe "patient of the month". it was an absurd applicationof the current policy which consisted of electingan employee of the month. they hijacked what could be considered propaganda, or a way of promoting an idea.

since the start of the revolution, one fundamental approach, especially since fidel castro's"history will absolve me" speech, consisted of reclaimingor rehabilitating agricultural regions, the country,and not only the cities, which were more developed. the philosophy of that periodwas absurd. at the time,i wasn't aware of it but i knewthere was something

which didn't seem quite right. for example,there's the photo in whicha humble old gentleman proudly displays a gramma with the headline "a cuban in space!"it made the front page that day.it was huge news that a cuban citizenwas a cosmonaut. this was a great paradox of cuban societyat the time.

people lackedmany basic necessities, and yet,there was a cuban in space. i found that very interesting. i have an intense relationshipwith writing. in fact,before i fully consecrated myself to painting and art,i wrote. i lived with other poets and writers. i think that's the basisof the intense relationship

that links my work with words.since i started painting, even in my first pictorial works, words have always beenvery present. i mix images and words.i love comics, that interactionbetween the textual image and the visual image. i started studying artquite late. in cuba, the academic path to study artstarts at a young age.

i only started at university, after a very intenseperiod of self-education. when i started my education, i integrated subjectsthat already interested me in terms of image and writing. it wasn't untili started art school at the age of 18, with the handicapsof being self-taught, and the educational problems

of arriving fromthe underground scene with no real references, that i became interestedin photography. i thought that photographywas a good substitute for many things thatinterested me in painting. i started thinking abouthow to modify photos by using text or a space in whichthe image is placed. i integrated reflectionson the theme of representation,

omnipresent in conceptualism since the '60s and '70s. i launcheda huge research project on this.not only on photography, but aboutthe nature of the image itself and the nature of the objectto be represented. fin de silenciois an ensemble of works grouped under this title,dated around 2006. much of my workcomes from walking around the city.

i have a strong relationshipwith cities. i send a lot of timewalking around cities. for me, havanais like an open book. it's my principal workspace and i understandmost of its references. these are placesi've known since i was a child, shops which have been abandoned, which were destroyed,or have disappeared. but, as often in havana,

something remains,fragments that still live, or are heading towards extinction. it's a city which always liveswith its past, which reinventsand recycles itself. what caught my attention was the typographic styleof these places. it's very fanciful.at that moment, i realized thatthroughout the streets of havana, writing was almost everywhere.

i wondered why. why la general, el volcã¡nor la lucha? these are incredible titles. there are 3 stages:the string drawing on the building facades,the granite slabs, and what is exposedat fondation cartier, a series of photo engravings of wordsinscribed on these blocks. the series they chose...

it was 4 photos that are part of the same series. the series is called pyramid.i worked on it for 2 years. what i found interesting as i worked on the project, was that sometimesit is a direct reference, in the attempt to create a revalorisation of the pre-hispanic past, but most of the time,when you go to places

that are typically pre-hispanic,like the mayan route, regions like yucatã¡nor quintana roo, the pre-hispanic architectureis much more present and often, in the form of a "show" for tourists. hotels, for example,are often decorated in pre-hispanic style. in the series presentedin the exhibition, there are metal gateswhich are reminiscent of pre-hispanic designs,or pre-hispanic gates.

i found these gatesin the places where rich people live. most of the people who lived in houseswith these gates that resembled pre-hispanic designs surely never realized it. the reference wasn't voluntary. for the project, the photos are 50x60 cm.

certain photos are larger but i wanted to returnto the classic photo format, viewed from nearer. details should be sought outinstead of leaving it to the format. as i worked on other projects, i keep pulling closer and closer in. i explain it in various ways, but i think it's dueto the classical education i receivedfor numerous years.

"the starting point of the seriesof photographs entitled holbox was a tourist visitto this island in the mexican caribbean. the idea was to create an archive in which the photosdecipher a future, a series of documents of what is to come. a shift in time,in which the equation of the present multiplied in the direction of the future represents the predominantuse of space: the buying and selling of land.

the condition of the market and itspermeability and involvement in an island. time in functionand at the disposal of added value. speculation and the specializationof space in an out-of-place place. a paroxysm in a mirror, a tourist on a flooded island." paula and i went on vacation,like tourists. the trip was tocelebrate our 5-year anniversary.

what we saw and experienced in this place,actually consisted of seeing... the evolution, or rather, the regression of the island in the course of the last 6 or 8 years. while walking on the island, we discovered all these "for sale" signs. we realized that the island was up for sale,

with all the paradoxesthat this implied. this island,a sort of refuge, but whichhad been sucked into the realityof the world economy. these island plots were selling like hotcakes. when you live ina city of 25 million, like here, seeing these sorts of signs,"house for sale" or "for rent" is completely normal.

but when you are on an islandwith 500 inhabitants, it becomes shocking as i show... in this photo inventory. i like to think of it as an inventory,a succession of places, with this ideaof the advance of time. it'd be interestingto return in 10 or 15 years to photograph the placeswhere the signs were,

and have been replacedby houses or hotels. i always worked inblack and white. i had the luck to beãlvarez bravo's assistant. when i was little,i took a few photos because my fatherwas an amateur photographer. i studied cinematography. i wanted to be a writerbut i married very young, and had 3 children. at 26,i began my film studies at cuec. that's where i met ãlvarez bravo,who gave a class on photography.

since i had one of his books, on an exhibition he'd doneduring the olympics, i asked him to sign it. i was married with children. i asked if i could take his classand i learned by his side. later on, he asked me tobe his achichincle. the achichincle in nahualtis the one who assists the mason, who brings the trays of cement. i accepted, of course!

so i accompanied him and watched how he workedin black and white. i'd always adored black and white,but then, even more so. i became accustomed to it. i fell in love with black and white. i've never liked colour. as for frida kahlo,i don't know why, i took a roll of colour film and i shot in colour.

i'll tell you the storyof frida kahlo's bathroom. when frida kahlo died,in 1954... she'd been very sick. certain people claimshe took a lot of demerol, which is like heroin, due to the unbearable pain. that's what they say,but no one knows. she had to take a lotto withstand the pain. so, frida died in 1954.

next to her room,stairs led to a bathroom. when frida died,diego rivera ordered the museum directorsto close the bathroom because it containedfrida's belongings. personal thingslike her corset, her prosthetic leg, her earrings, her huipiles, which are the outfits she wore, typically mexican. although at one time,she'd also worn french capes.

she also had a lot of shoesfor her prosthetic leg. they decided to close itfor 15 years. dolores olmedo, the head of the foundation,a very wealthy woman, refused to open the bathroom. when dolores olmedo died, it was 50 years after frida's death.the bathroom was reopened. the only rooms that had been shutin the house were the two bathrooms,for 50 years.

one bathroom heldthe secrets of her letters and loves, and the one i photographedwas the bathroom of pain. it was very impressive. they'd called meto shoot some of her clothes. i said, "no, i don't do studio photography." but i felt something. it had been closed.the smell was very strong. in it was her corset,her prosthetic leg. there were also a lotof political posters, of lenin and stalin.

there was a small cabinetcontaining personal belongings. when i saw all these things, it really impressed me.in addition, the smell was very strong. i had the impressioni could feel that woman's pain. when i entered the bathroom, i analysed all the objectspresent in the bathroom. certain were in the bathtub, others hadn't been moved.

but after that series, i made a small book on frida kahlo, as well as another in italy, with short texts, to reclaim what i had done when i entered frida's room,which no one has entered since. the book is an ancient support which has been recuperatedby the language of images, allowing us to create a rhetoric.

i worked witha small 35mm camera with only one lens. this was still analog photography. but back then,they always said, "vertical always works.if it's horizontal, it needs a double page." this encouraged a certainstyle of composition. and the classic imagethat resulted... i'll show it to you. it's called volando bajo.

i found myself face-to-facewith this guy, standing in front of a wall.the guy is skinny. the mural is magnificent:"sex pistols," with the pistol. this guy, to see what was going on... we were about 1 m apart. he leapt in the air to provoke me and at that instant... la ãšltima ciudad is a projecti developed

over a decade. at that time,all the photographers were interested inindigenous communities, the rural situation, and it was only journalists who covered the cities. there existed a traditionin mexico, notably nacho lã³pezin the '50s, with yo, el ciudadano,

who over several years, compiled his reportingin a book. i had that as reference. as an admirerof nacho lã³pez's work, i decided to begin a workon the city. i lived there,i didn't need to move. i wanted to confrontthis big city which is really horrible and gigantic.

it took me years to understand that it wasn't a descriptionof the city, it was an evocationof the experience of walking throughthe streets of mexico city. actually, i was able to discover,through photography, and through my interest in photography,latin america. since the '70s, latin-americanphotographers have emerged

and they have made a name for themselves in new york,in europe, in spain. we weren't in direct contact. i discovered brazilian photographers in the cities,without meeting them. we decided to end all that and establish direct communication, so we created the colloquiumof latin american photography.

we realized we had bonds we were unaware of,that united us. paris is nearer to mexico citythan buenos aires. geographically,the distances are enormous. but from a cultural point of view, and especially linguistic, the connections are so powerful that they inevitably appear between the photographers.

an issue with uruguayan, chilean,mexican, or cuban photographers, is that we have more in commonwith each other than the cities with which we are tryingto be in contact. this openedvery interesting vistas for us. we wondered,"how is it was possible we'd never foundeda latin-american unit?" we're far from buenos aires,but there are countries in between. we could create a chain and set up mechanismsto allow us

to have closer communication. it remains an enigma. it's been more than 30 yearsand we continue to mostly be in contactwith the metropoles. i travel a lot.i'm invited to give conferences or organize exhibitions in new york,madrid, or milan, while in buenos aires,it's been years we've been negotiatingto organize a studio.

it's much more complicated. it's a very paradoxical situation. latin america, culturally,is very united but there is a sort of vacuumin terms of relations. since the arrival of socialand digital networks, opening new possibilities for us.yes, things have changed in the last decade, yet once again,we're faced with this marvel... even with brazilians,i speak to them in spanish,

i write to them in spanish,and they answer in "span-guese." if they think i won't understand, they'll find another way to express it. i don't know what languagewe speak anymore. our communication is fluid, and this comesfrom our common roots which datefrom the 16th century, when europe discovered america. these 4 centuries createda connection between us.

and today, thanks to these tools,we notice a change which is undeniable. it's phenomenal, amusingand stimulating. okay. shall we get a coffee?