Air Conditioning Most likely, photography has contributed significantly to the “crisis of the object” that Breton talked about back in 1936. And contrary to what the most trusting minds imagine, photography can also be contributing, more than anything, to a crisis of the objective. But one thing at a time. Because a crisis of the object—in the sense that Breton gave it, a meaning I still think we should leave intact—is, above all, a crisis in the way we imagine things. If we have acknowledged the influence of photography in dramatic changes in portraiture and in the way we represent people (that is to say, bodies), we should equally recognize its importance in the representation of objects and the reorganization of the relationships between object, image and function. That is the meaning that Breton gave it: a “mutation of functions” and of a displacement of the “value of convention” by the value of representation. I accept these ideas without regret because I feel a total affinity with the language that we use to speak of surrealism and the language that we use when we speak of photography. Surrealism is incorporated in the photography curriculum, not as a style, which would be the easiest solution, but as a structure, like something that is internal or intrinsic to the program. Photography makes possible the surrealist craving to reposition objects (and also codifies it in a unique way), repositioning their meaning and rethinking the way in which they are related to one another. Each photograph establishes and legitimizes a specific way of relocating the objects in an enunciated reality, as well as in the language that enunciates it. Before, paintings had touched that boundary through the genre of the still life. And much surrealist art conserves these vestiges of allegory and this affinity for the static. But photography (any type of photography) can go further, since it achieves the same effects with living creatures, with subjects in movement, with dynamic situations. A consequence of this is that special effectiveness that makes use of the photographic image to mix object and bodies, to exchange the places and the roles of the objective and the subjective. These are the possibilities with which Sandra Valenzuela is working, photographing objects with a concentration that is misleading. Because, in principle, it prompts us to
attribute a rationality to her photos to which they really do not aspire. Perhaps it is because we are accustomed to understanding rhythm and order as signs of intelligence. Or perhaps because in such detailed close-ups we believe we can detect an almost scientific interest in the subject. As if the act of taking a photograph depended on a genuinely cognitive search. It is true that in many of these photos the objects do not “reveal” themselves. That is to say, they seem unusual. They hold out the possibility and charm of rediscovery. But it is not so much to help us better understand what they are, as to sense what they can (or want to) be. We suspect that the objects have a will (a metaphorical will, perhaps), a certain autonomy, a subjectivity. That is how Sandra Valenzuela’s photos come closer to a crisis of objectivity than to a crisis of the object. In these photos the objective (as much as the “objectual”) becomes relative. And the way in which the objects declare their relationship with the human body plays a crucial part in that process. There is a group of works, that includes the Clean-Freak series and photos like Clean-Beat and Collar that are images constructed with objects that make reference to the body and that in some way take its place and evoke it. That is to say, they signify it. The hygienic functions of these objects (toilet tissue, deodorant, soap or Q-tips) are clearly shown. And their function inevitably depends on physical contact with the body. It is a function from which, in most cases, the object would come out sullied and contaminated, physically or functionally worn out. The cleanliness of the object foresees its future contamination. Its presence refers to an unclean body. Or better, to the presumed impurity of the corporal (pills evoke sickness more than health, functioning more as a symptom than as a remedy). So much tidiness, so much white, so much purity seem paradoxical ways of illustrating (or evoking) the abject. So much cleanliness seems to be an ironic commentary on the hysterical rejection of meat in a society obsessed with hygiene, probably one of the signs that Kristeva would call “new illnesses of the soul.” Karen Wilken has said that the objects Giorgio Morandi usually painted were like domestic debris, things that were used and thrown away once they were damaged or their contents used up. The objects that Sandra Valenzuela photographs also presume the possibility of waste. Perhaps Sandra shares this attraction for the decadent, masquerading as tidiness with the Italian painter. In
any case, her Desayuno Giorgio Morandi pays homage in a way that is sufficiently coherent. The group shown in this work seems idiosyncratic, but it summarizes the author’s major esthetic interests: curiosity for the possibilities of the still life, the ambiguous way in which the objects are represented, the suspicious cleanliness of the compositions, the economy of color, the vaguely surrealist touch of some of the images. Desayuno Giergio Morandi contains another curious element. It is a work of arealism that is so caustic (to use a Barthesian term) that it seems pictorial. To me it seems a highly audacious way of inverting and forcing the possibilities of the verisimilitude on the photographic object. Concurrently, it adds elegance to the process of encounter and adds complexity to its “intertextuality.” References to the pictorial appear recurrently in the work of Sandra Valenzuela. More obviously in Modernismo estomacal or even in 4329-calorías. More subtly in En-vase. But always in relation to the encounter, playing with the possibilities of the abstract and flirting with the boundaries between simulation and realism. These types of works reveal a new sensitivity to the photographic, with results that could be classified as “weak”. They are images that boast of a certain humility, in that they do not try to become either monuments or receptacles of a presumed collective memory. They do not try to force our credulity before the representation. And they dilute the features of the subject just enough so that the result is always characterized by ambiguity. In fact, the objects that Sandra selects are weak and fragile. They suggest a reality that is going soft, a universe that is not heroic. Although they are functional, they seem useless; although they are utilitarian, they appear decorative. They remain removed from the virility historically attributed to the photographable, and therefore they subtract authority from the photographic act itself. A common feature of this practice is the effect of transparency, which diminishes the objective of making the object photographed appear solid, and therefore the solidity of the reality itself. Sandra Valenzuela’s “white” photos suggest that kind of transparency. The images of the Toques series exploit it more explicitly. At the same time they go back to using the resource of “re-
functioning” the sanitary items. The toothbrushes seem to adopt human poses. They almost seem to embrace, copulate or dance. The suggestion of the erotic intervenes to subvert the aseptic. The manner in which the objects are perceived in subjective terms reaches a climax with the attribution of sexuality. This resource reproduces, ironically, the mixture of candor and perversion that we frequently find in children’s games. Almost all Sandra Valenzuela’s works possess that ironic and somewhat “transgressive” tone. There we find subtlety expressed like a fading of effects and a masking of intentions. Like the quality of the objects and of the way in which they are represented. The objects, overflowing with subtlety, also become ambiguous and mixed. Their identity becomes vague, their presence fleeting. Their existence, almost irreverent. Juan Antonio Molina Translated by Wendy A. Luft