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Francisco Reyes
Palma
I would like to focus this dialogue on some of the tensions running through your work. The first has to do with the portraitist treatment of a certain type of objects associated with the universe of infamy, unanimated substitutes for specific bodies whose traces your photographs convey. I am referring to the series Los pasos perdidos (The lost steps), from 1996, thus titled after the zone of human blunders, the incriminating evidence contained in the archive of crime statistics at the Justice Department in Lima. Let us discuss the forceful indicative prevalence derived from those fetishist objects, considering them as fictitious figures that are endowed with a certain aura of power. Literally, the object is a witness to an act. It is like a complete extension of the person himself, while the photograph is an extension of the light of the object. The object is the trace or the mark of a personality that is maintained although the person no longer exists; it allows us to look at how he lived; it gives us a via of access into his personal world. The object seen in analytical terms is important because it leads us to someone in particular, to his feelings; what is more, it carries us toward the drama that divided the life of an individual into a before and an after. It seems that your work takes on a testimonial role, although, more precisely, it reopens cases and trials in the eyes of art, a sort of counter naturalism, which not only distances itself from the document but also reduces the image-testimony to the role of still-life, or, to be more exact, of the live-life. I used the principle of the still-life, for example, with the feminine garments in the short series carried out during the interval of a trip from Cuzco to Lima, Untitled, 1992, wherein I employed the same technique as in Bajo el sol negro (Under the black sun): placing the photographic paper in the large format camera with the intention of turning the negative into a 'non resolved' image, in such a way that the interpretation would become the responsibility of the spectator. In addition, as with the still-lives of classic painting, in the 1996 triptych entitled Últimas cosas (Last Things), I carried out a process of rather careful exposure so as to create contrast between the dark backgrounds of the object and, at the same time, obtain detail in the blacks. A game of chiaroscuro. Printed on large format black and white fibre paper, to which I later applied a coat of transparent wax, to make the image more pictorial. Until Blindados (Armoured), the most recent of your photographic series, one still in process, you pursue the model's gesture, trying to obtain a portrait, without placing importance on the fact that you are dealing with huge armoured beings.
These are photographs made with a large format camera of the armoured vans or vehicles that transport valuables, and my intention is to point out just which values are 'safeguarded' in the XX century: in other words, to what we confer so much value, what we protect against all others and how. I seek to classify the armoured cars by the distinct characteristics of each model and their capacities, but, to continue photographing them, I must obtain permits from the managerial bureaucracy. Possibly, the images of these inaccessible constructions will be printed on very small format paper to facilitate the physical approach of the spectator, a proximity that is not achieved under ordinary circumstances, and much less so on the street. Ultimas cosas is a triptych derived from the sphere of madness control: a relaxation ball and some rusted surgical cups flanking a straightjacket, objects that were all provided by the Archives of the Mental Health Hospital in the capital of Peru. Here, the fetishes of infamy seem to be inscribed in a sacred scheme; there is no telling whether of the devotional of museums or of the mere religious reminiscence of a crucifix. Actually, I was raised in a very liberal catholic family, but I do not think this has much to do with this, except for the type of icon presented. At the time I made this series, I had less than six months left in Lima; the subjects were latent within me and I had to resolve them quickly. My work space at the mental health hospital was very narrow and full of relics; a very dark blanket served as background. It was a rather fruitful period in which I carried out different series; I knew that certain tactics worked for some subjects, while different ones worked for others; therefore, my formats are really visual tactics. Your work acts like a connection to dissimilar times, creating a sort of non-temporality by provoking a new memory of light for incriminated beings, archives where the images are organised by you under criterion of plasticity, a way of escaping the closed case of the object to which every quality of beauty or human transcendence is denied. By serialising the image, you mark unknown autonomous bodies. I would like you to comment on that tension between the notions of series and archives and their relation with two counterpoised obsessive orders, that of the punitive organisation and that of the artistic. It is difficult to speak with photographs, especially if you have something very specific to say; it is difficult for me to tackle a theme with only one image, although I do not doubt that others can do so. The way I analyse a concept, the way I propose an idea about it, is to make a suggestion that resembles an interpretation by means of a serial structure/sequence. Regarding my interest in archives, I am very attracted by their cataloguing and classification properties, and the open interpretation of the information contained in the same source. Perhaps that is the most interesting aspect. Yet, there is also the notion of history, not in the global or official sense, but rather as individual stories, for these are what, in the final analysis, tell us most about human beings. (…)
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