“Don´t ask me about Infanta Margarita, nor about the dog, nor the dwarf” Velazquez said in front of his masterpiece “Las Meninas”. “I just paint the air among them”. This anecdote is part of one of the texts that are included in What is seen. Photographs 1979/2007, the book and the exhibition, both retrospective that celebrate thirty years of work of Adriana Lestido, an inescapable name as a reference on contemporary Argentinian Photography. It is an anecdote that just fits the career, going from her days as a graphic reporter to the series around her relevant subjects – love, female condition, intimacy – up to the present, where nature has progressively more room in her photography. Because there is an aura – that “air” Velázquez speaks about – in the photographs Lestido sees, opposing the title of the book, they are not seen but are felt when you look at them. This is what embodies the images This exhibition at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, curated by Gabriel Díaz and Juan Travnik, is the second great retrospective of her work, the first one is accompanied by a flawless book, both sober and moving, of 152 photographs published by Capital Intelectual. The book has texts of Sara Gallardo, John Berger and Carl Jung, among other authors that seemed to contribute along the way with tracks that connect the photographic series of different times to make us reach the heart of each image, beyond her observation and ours as well.

Interview.

The picture that opens the book is Mother and Daughter of Plaza de Mayo taken in 1982, is the foundation of her work and also one of the most well-known images.

Do you remember that moment?

Adriana Lestido: In some way everything originates there. I did it the week after I joined La Voz newspaper, the first media I worked for. I remember the girl was standing by the mother and cried: there were many photographers taking the pictures of these two. I felt ashamed at that moment and I couldn’t raise my camera. Then the photographers went on taking images of the demonstration: there were orators but I kept close to the girl, she moved me. In a moment, the mother picked her and shouted together. Then, I took photograph and it was on the newspaper cover the following day.

How do you see it today, 20 years later

I always loved that picture very much, but when I did a retrospective in 2008, I realized that all I did later was right there: a mother, a daughter, and the pain for the absent man. I always thought the woman was asking for her man and the girl for her father. I could contact this woman last year and I learned that the disappeared man was her brother, Avelino Freitas, a workers´s leader from Molinos Rio de la Plata. But in the end it is the same conflict.

In the few images we know from your time as a graphic reporter, didn´t you think of including others from that period in this new exhibition?

No, because the idea was not to make a selection of all I did but go deep into it, into the plot that gathers all the narrations. It is the Children´s Hospital, adolescent mothers, the prisoners, the mothers and daughters. Love… but what is behind all this? That´s what I wanted to see: the guiding line to be able to tell only one story. That image of the mother and daughter of Plaza de Mayo, The Salsera, the picture of the Children´s Hospital and the Polaroids establish the link among the different series. From the period as a reporter, there are pictures I love a lot but they are something else, they don´t fit in that group; they are not part of the root.

What would you say is the difference between this retrospective from that of 2008 at Recoleta Cultural Center?

This exhibition is abridged: the full retrospective is the one I exhibited in 2008. This one is different, the series are different, and I also like what in conveys. In fact, the sense of this exhibition is to follow the presentation of the book. I didn´t want to make a formal presentation but to launch it with an exhibition. This book is the book of my life and I wanted it to come into the world with the strength that the exhibited images have. And of course, the Fine Arts Museum gives it a special magic. It is the best possible way.

How did the idea of the exhibition and the book appear? Did it go together? How did you get to What is seen, that title that goes from the eyes to the photograph and perhaps says that what you see is what exists?

The idea of the book comes from the retrospective 2008, I wanted the spirit to be reflected in a book. I somehow did that exhibition to free myself for all I had done, to cleanse. But the exhibitions are ephemeral, I understood I would be able to turn the page when I published the book. Anyway, the book is different, it is seen differently. It is much more intimate and I love it. The title resulted in the reading of Eisejuaz, the novel of Sara Gallardo. It is from there and I think it is perfect. Because it is not what I saw but what can be seen through me, beyond myself. What you see when it can be seen, let´s say.

Your pictures make a point in the female aspect on the one hand, and in nature on the other. What do you find attractive of both or what do you want to research?

In fact, I don´t want to research anything. It is only there are things I need to see, to understand. In that sense, more that researching, I become an instrument of what I want to see. The presence of the female world is not intentional perhaps because I am a woman and and I look from what I am… But the strong presence of women in all the series I developed perhaps has more to do with the absence of a man. Even in the last series Love where there is a man – only nature and a man, the same one in several photographs – also the absence is felt there. The last series, Villa Gesell – which is shorter – is in some way the end of love. There is also nature and a woman in the last picture hardly visible, a self-portrait.

Nature seems to be more present

Yes, nature is every time more present, in photographs and in my life. It helps me with the cleansing, to connect with the core, and from the image, perhaps it helps me express the same as usual but with other tools. It also gets me closer to dreams, to other areas.

Generally speaking, regarding the different series of your works, do they have a common way to be created and developed?

I don´t know if they have a common style. They were appearing in different ways. The first series appeared because I had gone to the Neuropsychiatric hospital Borda for DyN. Just beside it is the Children´s hospital and I felt the impulse to do something, probably because it is associated to my story. But I understood it had to be done differently, not just a bird´s eye view. I worked there for a whole year and I developed a totally intuitive essay; at that time I didn´t know what a photographic essay was. I had seen the Humanarium of Sara Facio and Alicia D’Amico, and though not consciously it must have influenced me for sure.

Then comes the series of adolescent mothers, the prisoners, and mothers and daughters that seem to derive from the same core. They emerged because I wanted to do something about maternity in critical situations. In fact, at the beginning, it was going to be just only one task that I planned to develop through a year. The idea was to go first to photograph adolescent mothers, go on with the prisoners and then observe other situations related to maternity. But in the end, I stayed one year with the adolescents and ended up being a task in itself. When I finished with them I thought of taking pictures of childbirths, something that was pending. But when reading the book The Club of the Good Star by Amy Tan, I realized there was something I needed to see in the mother-daughter relationship, that all I had to understand was there. That was the origin of and Mothers and Daughters that at the beginning was called Difficult Loves. In the end, what was meant to be done in a year, ended up in 10 years!

¿And with the series Love?

Love was different. I wanted to do something related to it, but it was only a vague idea. On the other hand, in the trips I did together with my couple, sometimes I took pictures and later looking at them I realized there was something else than the mere pictures of a trip. The series was building up. After we separated, I went on a trip on my own to the north of Chile and Bolivia, I made another series with those photographs. I realized they were part of love, in fact, the end of it. The photographs of Villa Gesell also originated on their own. I went to live there during a winter and a summer to a cabin in a camping site. I took some pictures without any intention whatsoever. The small series appeared and I close the book with it. And I also ended a stage.

Just a pair of color pictures in the book and the exhibition and still they have something missing of the black and white.

Why did you use black and white?

I feel black and white is more precise, it moves deeper without distractions. I´m interested in color but as in dreams; generally you remember a color when it signals something in the image. If not, you only have the image, without colors. It is not that I´m interested black and white by on their own, I rather care for the absence of color, the bare image.

Your last work, the one we haven´t seen yet, is in the Antarctica, what was the experience like?

It was both a hard experience and fundamental for me. I needed to be there, in a place where death is so present. Death as a transformation, and also the origin, as a rebirth: the white continent. Up to now, I could only see and select a few color photographs that I took with a panoramic camera. I had taken some color rolls, not many, and I used half of them because that camera began to get stuck because of the cold. Most of those pictures got spoilt, but I saved only a few and I could only put together some of them. All the others are black and white, they are a lot, and I haven´t finished with the work copies. That´s what I´m doing.

You quote Sara Gallardo in one of the texts that come with the book,: "What shall I say now?". Does it exist for you the equivalent to “the fear of the blank page” for the writer?

For me, the blank page doesn´t exist, just the other way around, it is full of things, of noise and work, the hard work is to clean it. I´m never worried in those periods I´m not taking photographs or working with them. Work is cleaning and that´s what I always do. Creation is cleansing, it is to make room for something else to be. Deep inside I think it is the only thing one can do, that must do. And it has to do with the never ending process on inner learning that is not limited to creative experience but an attitude towards life. The rest will be coming on its own.

Los Inrockuptibles, June 29, 2013.

back