Revista Negra #13 (Eng) by NEGRA Revista Cubana de Fotografía

JUL. 2015 / n.13

negra Havana’s Creative Photography School Magazine

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Alejandro González

Bimonthly Edition

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Enrique Rottenberg

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Bimonthly Edition

Summary

JUL. 2015 / n.13

DIRECTOR

Tomás R. Inda Barrera EDItion Y CORRECtIoN

Yalemi Barceló

Ailen Maleta San Juan

Jenny Etcheverry Editorial Board

Jorge Luis Rodríguez Márgel Sánchez Haydee Oliva Valle Enrique Rottenberg Cristina Díaz Erofeeva

Alejandro González: space, subject, fiction? [Nahela Hechavarría Pouymiró]

FotoFAC Photo-mania

24 ¿Breaking rules? ¿Breaking Bad? [Antonio Enrique González Rojas]

David Friedman

Legal Counsel

Translation

Dorcas Rodríguez

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18 Enrique Rottenberg: my photos are ironic [Astrid Orive García]

Art & Design Director

Coordinator

29 My last Venuses: Liesther Amador in the nude [Antonio Enrique González Rojas]

30 A common place, a strange place: notes about Leandro Feal’s photography [Michel Mendoza Viel] 32 Eager visions. David Velázquez’ Photography [Yenny Hernández Valdés] 34 From Mambo to Hip Hop [Claudio Sotolongo]

Developing

36 Yuri Obregón: a sacredly obscene citizen X [Racso Morejón]

NOVEL 46 Innocent bodies. Fracturing social taxonomies [Yenny Hernández Valdés] 54

The clothesline

POEM

Safety word [Anisley Negrín]

21stStreet e/ Paseo y A

Tel.: + 537 832 6592 efchabana@gmail.com www.efchabana.com

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How did you get the Revista Negra (Black Magazine)? Which sections do you prefer? What topics would you like the magazine to cover?

On the Cover

from the series D贸nde / Where, 2000 (fragment) [Alejandro Gonz谩lez]

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http://issuu.com/revistanegra NEXT

from the series D贸nde / Where, 2000

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Alejandro González: space, subject, fiction?

[Nahela Hechavarría Pouymiró]

Delving. Making (us) part of a story -always fragmented, we know- seems to be every photographer’s, every image hunter’s intention. This is how they attract us and make us a participant. Photography that seduces and exerts an influence on those who look at it, given the intensity with which it concentrates and displays “evidence”, through their interpretation codes, is not a secret. Isolating/extracting a moment the flow of life becomes the starting point, just a mere an anchoring, never the actual purpose of a photograph. Questioning ourselves about: what do we look for in an image? the before (the story behind it, in the sidelines, built by the “Thinking Eye”) or the after (anything that takes us to its consumption, “our” visual connection, emotional, memorable)? There must be as many answers as there are images and individuals. In this uncertain domain hundreds /thousands of images are daily produced and de-codified, then, how else could we understand the commitment to pursue a more conscious search of that which is real-sensitive? Photographers try to show the other (us) a new perspective, a different, unusual, personal angle. Thus, in a rapid flight through the work of Alejandro Gonzalez (Havana, 1974), you can see an idea-thematic line which goes to/from/between space-subject-fiction in a constant oscillation which examines various contexts and situations that appeals to our memory, to the different stages of recent history (personal/Cuban) and the present as the “here and now” we live in and escapes in its ephemeral, elusive, perishable character. Self-taught, like many other Cuban photographers, Gonzalez step by step has managed to carve his place in the current art scene, following a path of his own in which photography has been the center, although he has oc-

casionally ventured into other media such as installations and video. Through his series Quién / Who (1999) we access the city’s space, and there, the image of the “citizen” which fades or blurs, (semi) hidden, dynamic in its come-and-go, sometimes almost colorless, absent, in trance. However, in the Dónde / Where (2000) the human footprint is simply sensed. By choosing the different spaces of a prefabricated building as a metaphor of enclosure, the dis-location of the individual, the same oppressive feeling the people who inhabit it experience daily invades us. This enclosure, this non-place, whose architecture is so abstract that it conveys abandonment, loss. Photographed in black and white, both sets seem united by a similar state of mind. The question arises, if so much rationality does not seem to envision life, what remains? Well Vacío / Void. This is how he named the group of images (2000-2002) who sought above all within domestic spaces, seemingly insignificant places and reasons, but which indicated habits, in a lacking material environment, resulting from the indiscriminate accumulation, and sometimes kitsch as a cultural reference. The object perhaps as abstraction of who we are... And almost at par, the amazement which the framing produces in the viewer, the fragment, which was selected by the author to show us: simple and vacuous everyday life. The interest in the immediate environment and habits of the individual, led him to follow the footprints, the city’s marks in his Memorias del subsuelo I y II / Notes from Underground I and II (2001). In the first part, from the foundations we sense the former benches, jardinières, and column & flagpole bases, as remnants of another civilization, perhaps earlier to the present prevailing apathy. In the second one, Alejandro left the “city-city” to go to its limits -Alamar- to investigate this interruptednegra 5

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from the series Memorias del subsuelo II / Notes from Underground II, 2001 (up y right)

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space, a project of an autonomous city that became a mere “bedroom” with many streets left half done, as if the buildings were islets connected by a single path. However, thanks to the paths, trails and their daily use, a new sense of viability is being outlined, one of forced urbanity, durable, non-directed, and at the same time fragile, since it is not pre-set, which responds to freedom of action, to human will, always changing. We can then appreciate forks, spaces won over from the weeds, crossroads, or sometimes some truncated asphalt that leads nowhere, to something that is beyond our gaze, always out of the frame. This record-fragment perspective which crosses Alejandro’s work connects with many contemporary artists’ interest of dissecting their living environment and identifying topics which are not always comfortable or innocent. Even when Gonzalez had just began as many others working in press office1, his intention was geared more towards documentary photography than to journalism, consuming “photographic essays” in which from a preconceived idea of what he wants to achieve or communicate, the photographer “goes out” to seek an image(s). This is therefore a targeted search, focused, and therefore not dependent on chance or a fortuitous “encounter” with the image. Although some of his later series are still interrogating the mainly urban Cuban context, through his emerging actors -youngsters, people living on the fringe of conventionalism and the “official’ unified vision of Cuban society-, the frontal view the artist himself recognizes,2 will take him to face not only the subject but also his identity, even to question national memory and history from his own experience in other projects.

(1) In the mid-nineties, he worked as a photographer of the Press Department of the Casa de las Americas. (2) Lirians Gordillo, Fotografía, de frente y sin mucha azúcar… (Interview with Alejandro González), Dédalo, n. 13, June, 2010, pp. 26-29.

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I have pointed out in other texts how photography is both intend to “reveal” something and to “show” yourself to others, and that personal touch is what enhances his communication potential, its value as a document, its memorable condition. In 2005, Alejandro starts two projects AM-PM and Future: 2005, which viewed independently, however it appears that, by focusing attention on both the subject and space, it is almost impossible to separate them, since they complement each other. The first one searches for the individual to “observe him” from upfront, the camera becomes an accomplice, the first stage of acceptance, recognition. Indeed, AM-PM recorded with the clinical precision of an anthropologist3 those creatures of Havana at night, mostly young, who swarm the main arteries (23, Malecón) and neighborhoods (El Vedado, Playa), and make the city theirs, with their carefree “poise”. Behaviors which are not always accepted or approved by others, or merely the attractiveness of one or more of these unique “characters”, their attitudes, their ways of interaction, that is what we are shown. Gonzalez, embodies the popular feeling, documents scenes emerged in the heat of the night, -many of the images were shot between April and July-; a glimpse of how much remains suggested, out of the frame, left to our imagination. But also, this series is like an urban personal diary, which traps and refers the author’s route(s), his time. Actually the whole set works as a kind of self-portrait featuring Alejandro as a privileged witness. In the same manner, you could follow this line of interest in his series Conducta impropia / Misconduct (2008) and Cuba, año cero / Cuba Year Zero (2009-2010),4 where the subject (whether collective or individual) not only acquires body and an unambiguous presence, but becomes a (political, social) discourse. Conducta im-

11-14 pm, April 21, 2005, Playa, Havana from the series AM-PM

(3) Each image marks the exact time and place where it was taken. For example: 1-41 am, May 21, 2005, Vedado, Havana (4) Although according to the artist’s blog there was an up-date of the series with various images taken in 2011, so I think this project is still work in progress, which may be further updated. (See https://alejandrogonzalez.wordpress.com)

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10-46 pm, November 19, 2005, Playa, Havana from the series AM-PM

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11-17_1-19 am, June 18, 2005, Vedado, Havana from the series AM-PM

10-31_10-33 pm, December 18, 2005, Vedado, Havana from the series AM-PM

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15 and 08, June 14, 2008, Mi Cayito, Havana, Cuba from the series Conducta Impropia / Misconduct, 2008

from the series Conducta Impropia / Misconduct, 2008

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propia is a sort of “essay” from/about (sexual, identity, ethnic) diversity, and as an essay he managed to merge both the collective and the individual subject in a series of portraits on the beach “Mi Cayito” and several close-ups of faces which are difficult to classify faces by gender or sexual preference.5 Ordinary people, like everyone else, with personal stories and projects, but whose daily actions must be recognized and accepted, in order to transcend the social ghetto to which they have been historically confined.6 Meanwhile, although Cuba, año cero focuses its “eye” also on youngsters, this time it’s focused on teenagers belonging to that generation born after/during the Special Period, who never knew the “other” Cuba, the one “before” the debacle, when the future looked promising, even though of course had its gray dots. Today’s youngsters, children of the crisis, natural rebels, just like maybe twenty years ago Alexander himself was, faced with doubts, with hope, with the usual anxieties of this stage of life, while identifying themselves with groups (urban tribes such as the so called frikis, emos, repas, mikis) actors within Vedado’s G Street framework. However, the author did not confine himself to the capital’s context, he also searched in rural and marginal areas for the portraits of these young people who also crave, laugh or serenely look at the camera as part of a generation that was born just as the country, from zero, ready to reinvent themselves without the burden of a national history and imposed duties. This series just as Conducta impropia was created in color, unlike the expected black and white in AM-PM, and that chromatic plurality perhaps reinforces the uniqueness and the differences, that necessary diversity of our contemporary society. However, as I mentioned above, together with this line of work focused on the subject and their actions, another thematic angle also flows which searches for memories, (5) Note that the series shares the title with the 1984 documentary created by Nestor Almendros and Orlando Jimenez.

from the series Cuba, año cero / Cuba Year Zero, 2009-2010

(6) This series received for its quality, the Casa de las Americas CLACSO Photo Award in 2009, which had as its theme the fiftieth anniversary of the Cuban Revolution and its challenges.

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Lenin Parkâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Auditorium, Havana, feb 2005 from the series Futuro

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TararĂĄ surroundings, Havana, July 2005 from the series Futuro

Lenin Parkâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Swimming pool, Havana, feb 2005 from the series Futuro

quasi-UFO of the Russian Embassy, Havana, January 2006 from the series Futuro

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national history viewed from the author’s personal experience. Futuro: 2005 is a close look at the phenomenon of evocation of events, feelings, spaces that still reside in our memory and which the artist is willing to revisit. In this series Alejandro goes back to the time when the “Generation of the 2000” was a promise to be fulfilled, an aspiration for the future of many children, that time yet to-come, which already arrived and which is interrogated by the photographer’s lens. Returning to some places, such as the Tarará Pioneer summer camp, the “Moscow” restaurant, Lenin Park’s surroundings, or the quasi-UFO of the Russian Embassy in Playa, these were all common to many families. To observe, if from the distance which we perceive from looking back “from the future”, these sites which were once great projects or references of the capital’s life, from side angles, have become disenchanted voyeurs. A perspective that points to “looking back over our shoulder” to understand that the future also has a “here and now”, that the present is nothing less than the future of that longed past. Here, as expected, that memorable condition is undoubtedly the closest accomplice for reflection: experiences and history blended into a whole. Similarly, in 2013,7 his Re-construction series took another twist, a new level within the discourse of the analysis of how memory and historical stories shape the social being that we are. The series moves forward and backward in the evolution of the Island and its postrevolutionary era, it winks at us, staging, in the author’s words, “important moments in the country’s history: some real, historical; others belong to the collective imagination. Many of the recreated moments were not recorded or transmitted by the official media (at least not in the way that I show them in my photographs). Therefore rather than rebuilding it, I compose the story”. This will of re-meaning, generate alternative readings of facts or circumstances from simulations or photo mani(7) Joint exhibition with photographer José A. Figueroa entitled Historias diferidas, Galería Servando, Havana, January-February 2013. (8) Taken from the artist’s blog.

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One day from 1984 from the series Re-construcción, 2013

July 7, 1989 from the series Re-construcción, 2013

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A normal day 1965-2012 from the series Re-construcción, 2013

pulations, is an attitude towards history which is not very innocent, yet very speculative. And if the composition and its staging contradict with the apparent “documentary” character with which the project is conceived, why not understand the document itself also as a creative act and not mere data? The historical legitimacy may be a fictional story, as the artist seems to be telling us. Similarly the series has a unique temporality since the images speak of a country’s statism (A normal day 1965-2012),

from his recent memories (July 7, 1989, August 6, 1994) or even its present fabled (January 13, 2013) and even abstract future (May 2, 2017). Finally, during the recently concluded Havana Biennial (2015), a new section of this re-construction project which focuses on the Grey Quinquennium could be seen. The photographer extremes his position of power also as a “modeler” of history, passing from “vivid” staging to the modeling of certain events which, having been born in

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January 13, 2013 from the series Re-construcción, 2013

the mid-seventies, he could not live personally. Indeed, we’re talking about “five events, five cardboard and lead models, [which] reconstruct a period of dogmatism and bureaucracy”. It’s then a “critical reinterpretation” of that period, seen from the epochal distance and the superiority of the present. “Everything seems to be historically perfect in Alejandro’s photographs; his panoramic views give the feeling of being able to replace the reality they imitate [...]. Everything is identical, every uniform, just 16 negra

like the history we lived”.9 And the leaden greyness of images reaches the beholder with rigidity and stiffness of the events they evoke. The form precedes, reaffirms, models, the content. In Re-construction there is a shift which would seem conducive, natural, towards the express manipulation of the referent, namely history. A will (9) Estudio Figueroa-Vives, De la acera de enfrente, Norwegian Embassy/ Estudio Figueroa-Vives, Havana, pp. 20-21.

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May 2, 2017 from the series Re-construcción, 2013

to further control what is to be communicated, vented, discuss about topics and moments wedged into memory and the body of the Nation. Alejandro González’s work must be seen as the result of a transition from the “minimal” stories (personal, fragmented) where the subject is the guiding axis, towards space as a container/player of our memory, in which fiction becomes alibi and counterpart to what is “real”, to

the (official) History. Alter-native and accurate, such is his portrait of the country, of this time.

[Nahela Hechavarría Pouymiró] Santiago de Cuba, 1980. BA in History Art. Art critic and curator in Casa de las Américas. Editor of review Arteamérica and La Gaceta de Cuba. Research about photography and contemporary art.

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Enrique Rottenberg: my photos are ironic [Astrid Orive GarcĂa]

The big egg, 2014

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Enrique Rottenberg (Buenos Aires, 1948). He has lived and worked in Argentina, Israel and Cuba. He graduated in Philosophy at the University of Tel Aviv, and later studied film at the Tel Aviv Film School. He lives in Cuba since 1994, and since 2008 he’s been doing photography. He considers himself a Cuban photographer.

You studied philosophy, then film, you wrote a novel, and now you’re a photographer. How did this transition in your career take place?

you take out the sound and the dialogues a film loses almost all its effect. Neither literature nor photography have those two advantages.

Philosophy is essential for film-making, for photography and for writing, so let’s leave it aside. I come from a family dedicated to the theater, and among the arts, I chose the film. I made seven feature films as a producer or screenwriter, the last one I did as director and screenwriter.

Literature has the reader’s imagination. It is a different resource tan what you have in the movies, but also very powerful. In photography, however, you want to convey a feeling, a story, and you do it through a single image. It must contain the whole story, all that emotion which you want to convey. But it has the advantage that you are independent. You don’t owe the public anything. You just need a camera. You don’t even need to do the photo for others, you can do it to have it on your computer, and it didn’t cost you absolutely anything. It’s not a product that you necessarily have to market. That’s why I decided to leave film-making.

The problem with film-making is that it falls into the category of industry. You have to sell tickets, because if not no producer will want to invest in your movies. That means you have to take into account the public. Of the three artistic fields to which I have been dedicated, photography is the most difficult. Film has the advantage of dialogue and music. If

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The crazy years, 2015

Well, my grandmother isn’t here so... I received seven awards from the Israeli Film Academy for the last film I made, which are like a kind of Oscar in Israel, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Script.The title is Isaac Filkenstein’s Revenge, which is the most common name in Israel. It’s like saying Juan Perez or John Smith. My movies, like my photographs, don’t use a specific language or context. I’m interested in the conflicts of the common man, who goes through life lost. When I’m asked why my films never addressed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I replied that I had a lot more conflicts with my baldness than with the Palestinian people. When I hear some photographers talk about the need to document a certain reality, I say, “Well, if it really affects your day to day, then OK”. But I don’t think

it’s mandatory. My story lines are still my own problems, my baldness... metaphorical and real. What kind of photographer do you consider yourself? Once I heard Andres Serrano say “I’m not a photographer, I’m an artist,” and I liked his definition. For me, photography is a means to do what for me is art. I’m not a photographer documenting reality, but rather I use photography to express what I feel in a given situation. I don’t think of the photos beforehand. I have psychoanalytic influences, of the unconscious. I never think about what message I’m giving with this photo, nor do I formulate moral or immoral messages. First I take the photo and then I think about it. That confusion I have about everything in life is what allows me not define what I want to say. Afterwards it’s easy to analyze why.

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My photos are ironic, first because I’m ironic. Second, in order not commit myself so much with what the photo is saying. So I can shield myself behind an apparent joke Most of your pictures are in color. Why? We see in color. When you have to prepare a composition you have to assemble the photo but also the colors. Black and white frees you from that. When the photography started, it was done in black and white, but today its use must be justified, there must be a reason. It cannot be because I don’t know how to compose the colors. This country is wonderful in color. Each wall has thirty colors and so do people, going through the whole range. The tropics are a colorful place. It’s much more complex than black and white. I don’t understand photographers who make black and white photographs in this country. I live in a world full of colors... In your most recent works, you have repeatedly highlighted the issue of consensus, of the community. Why you are interested in this topic? In these photographs, such as La Fila (The Line) or La Danza (The dance), there is a mass but within it you can differentiate the individual, there are thirty women, thirty different stories. Consensus exists throughout the world, the fact of trying to fit in, to be part of it. Chomsky, the philosopher, talks about the engineering of consent, a conspiracy theory that forces people to act within the consensus parameters. I try to rescue the individual from within the mass. And I rescue them when I approach each one of them in the photo. What I try to do is “de-massify” that mass and highlight the individualities. This country has two huge advantages for photographers. For the series Dormir con… (Sleeping with...) I crossed the country without any appointments, I knocked on doors, and these were opened. I have photographed over 700 bedrooms. There’s no other country in the world in which I could do that. Similarly, it’s easier to undress a neighborhood. I say that all my models are from the same CDR. It’s easier to reach people, and I think that Cuban women have

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fewer issues with their bodies than European women, for example. I’m still a photography student, and I like to experiment. I like to see what happens when you photograph not one person, but to fifty, you have to split the shots in a different manner. My photography has a huge influence from film, they’re basically stagings. Even the few pictures that look like documentary scenes are staged. Are you preparing any new projects? Yes, I have more or less about 25 new projects, and I’m happy because sometimes you feel you’re drying up, like a well. But I still have many things to photograph, to experience... Like any artist, I’m constantly trying to change, because in a world where everyone has a camera, exhibiting a photograph is difficult. Now I’m trying to include more disciplines within my works, for them to be more installation-like and experimental. Any message you want convey to the novel photographers or to Negra’s readers? First, I’m one of the School’s students; second, some “tips” for novel photographers. My best teacher, after Inda, was my daughter. Once we were -something very bourgeois- skiing in the Swiss mountains and I stopped to take a photograph a snowy mountain. My daughter asked “why do you take pictures of what I can see? You should rather take photos of what can’t be seen”. That’s a tip: “take pictures of things that can’t be seen”. The other tip is about working with models. Take your models and make them do something normally don’t do, and take a photo of them like that, get them out balance, uncomfortable. These are things you can see in my photographs, I make old ladies dance. But anyways, it’s clear that I’m a provocative photographer... provocation is not necessary, and it shows when a photo is a simple provocation. [Astrid Orive García] Havana, 1986. BA in History Art.

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photoMANIA ¿Breaking rules? ¿Breaking Bad? [Antonio Enrique González Rojas]

La jungla / The jungle [Liudmila & Nelson]

he first “rule” that the curators Chrislie Perez and Alain Cabrera, sought to break with the group exhibition “Breaking Rules”, which was displayed as part of the Zona Franca (Free Zone) project of the XIII Havana Biennial was photography’s diegetic rigidity as significant self-sufficient being, as a flawless and faithful record of “reality”, or a “given reality” -the author’s-, sanctified by the frame and/or the diaphragm that determines its limits. While the internal context of the image has been modified countless times, using countless optical, technical and poetic resources, most of the photos gathered in the exhibition of yore are subject to a much more complex

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manipulation that resizes (reduces?) them as elements set in much larger constructs: real macro-contexts where the photographic image is a textual unity and not absolute text. An interest in installations prevails as a creative option that supports combinatorial interplay among various elements. In La jungla (The jungle), an installation created by the creative duo Liudmila & Nelson, a blurred shot of a demonstration in the Plaza of the Revolution –as is explained in the caption of the image- is fragmented and alternated with flagstones or “empty” spaces, which earn high significance. This implies a radical change of perspective, not only optical, but a whole antithetical analysis of the masses: its libelous notion of “inseparable unit” is revoked

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through the restatement as definitive method of social rupture and obliteration of the wills, either individual, or collective. Do not smile, by Ernesto Javier Fernandez, more of an installation-type work, seems to propose, without avoiding a certain sculptural slenderness, a much greater distancing from orthodoxy, towards an ironic reflection on the act of photographing and being photographed in itself: posing, staging, masquerade and manipulation. On the same string, but more demanding by the author, Linet Sanchez shows the two works that are part of the series Untitled. She exceptionally reveals –given certain procedural will of the exhibit as a whole- how the snowwhite recorded structures are small and delicate models, which when filtered by physical and creative optics are radically transmuted. The artist enjoys perceptual ensnarement, and validates it with her surreal architectures. With another installation: Atados de memorias (Tied up in memories), José Manuel Fors entirely relinquishes the authorial action of “taking a photo”, and structures a flat and melancholic evocation about the finiteness of life and the fragility of the past records; in this case old and yellowed family photos, anonymous like their author? in full dissolution. Lidzie Alvisa with the works A level and Diana, naively revisits, not without a certain visual and compositional elegance, -especially regarding the cleanliness of its making-, the established issue regarding female beauty canons anchored to catwalk glamor, facial regularity and the makeup-mask. Equally naive, but with graphic strength and semiotic effectiveness, was the diptych Confrontations, from the series Todo lo sólido se desvanece (Everything solid vanishes), by Alain Cabrera, curator-exhibitor that explores the eternal dialectic between thought and strength, art and violence, civilization and barbarism. Yomer Montejo advances somewhat more solidly with his installation of a set of four “photo-X-rays” (Se abre el

Do not smile [Ernesto Javier Fernández]

telón, Succión, Tiempo muerto y Esclavos del presente), (The curtain opens, Suction, Low season and Slaves of the present), which reveal an almost exotic dimension of Photography while working with X-rays. A kind of voyeurism is brought up, very subtle, hyper-realistic, meta-realistic, or perhaps even para-realistic...? Peeking beyond the borders of “privacy” in a symbolic tearing of kitsch veils with which individuality dresses-up in order to interact socially. The use of the usual “light boxes”, which in addition to being used as support, accentuate the mystery, somewhat more effectively than the simple New York IX, by Ernesto Javier Fernandez. negra 25 negra

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from the series Sin título / Untitled [Linet Sánchez]

Diana [Lidzie Alvisa]

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Atados de memorias / Tied up in memories [José Manuel Fors]

Confrontaciones / Confrontations [Alain Cabrera]

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Esclavos del presente y Tiempo muerto / Slaves of the present and Low season [Yomer Montejo]

Beyond the support, the printing (as in the case of the Cypripedium rosy-down piece by Adrian Fernandez: an atypical digital inkjet pigment ink printing on photographic paper) or the frame, the photo’s texture acquires great significance in the work Pensamiento Histórico (Historical thinking), from the War Hero series. Jorge Otero develops a homoerotic interpretation of icons, types and stereotypes of the Cuban peasant culture, in which the coarse vegetable weave like the guano used in very well-known campesino hats is crucial. Word and image are united in the Sobreviviendo (Surviving) triptych, by Nadal Anthelm, in which the three images-words contrast linked as an interdependent system, with their almost divergent autonomous meanings. The whole of each one, and each one as part of the whole...

New York IX [Ernesto Javier Fernández]

The proposal Todos somos culpables (We’re all guilty), by Alvaro José Brunet leans more towards a performance, or surely a happening, and is part of his project Photo

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Cypripedium rosy-down [AdriánFernández]

Sobreviviendo / Surviving [Nadal Antelmo]

Garage. A whole studio located in a portion of the gallery’s space which offers free snapshot services with “Rembrandt lighting”, as opposed to the usual kitsch and light aesthetics of the commercial image used for “quinces”, weddings and other social rituals. You could go beyond an alleged renewal of the “great art” or the stinging irony of a short film such as Utopia (Arturo Infante, 2004), in order to distinguish the problem of pure canonical hierarchies and how arbitrary these can be, according the cultural wills which dictate them. Pensamiento histórico / Historical thinking, from the series War Hero [Jorge Otero]

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photoMANIA My last Venuses: Liesther Amador in the nude [Antonio Enrique González Rojas]

ince human beings are one of the main figurative axis of art in all its history, the naked body is one of the most common manners for its representation, and the incarnation of the ideal as well as of the anti-ideal; becoming an important arena for the complementary differences between culture and counterculture, canon and anti-canon, containing indifferently both extreme polarities of the conservative and the revolutionary. However, nudes imply other subtleties and complexities that transcend to the pristine corporal nature, the physical in all its meanings and cultural connotations. The unclothed body then oscillates from “the nude” to the more abstract category of “nudity”: abstract, philosophical, immeasurable nudity. The photographic diptych My last Venuses is supported on such conceptions, exhibited at the XII Biennial of Havana as part of the group exhibition “Universal (Disambiguation)” -within the project Zona Franca, in areas of the La Cabaña fortress, where the artist from Ciego de Avila, Amador Liesther captures the bare biology of his grandmother and mother in life size. He uses flat lighting, shadow-free, to achieve the absolute radiance of the snowy and immaculate un-contextuality in which they lie? levitate? and these types of reincarnations or allegories to the Great Mother Goddess which lie in the foundations of the most ancient known civilizations definitely exist. Not only by the aforementioned spatial neutralization, but also by force of sincerity and an almost gritty realism of extremely high resolution and real-life size compared to the originals -without dash of digital manipulation or makeup-, Liesther knocks down the common barriers that tend to demarcate the spheres of meaning and existence of the work and the receiver. The presence of these women, their fixed gaze, and their almost majestic serenity, defy even the purest nuisance, or force to genuflect before the sacred. All this even despite the unfortunate black frames used to mount the parts, which limit the extension of the com-

My last Venuses [Liesther Amador]

pletely free diegetic space ad infinitum. The courageous, defiant, sacrificed, and loving gaze of these women –since they are looking at their offspring during the eternalized and unrepeatable moment of the photo session-, their faces between denial and challenge, their poses sure and even comfortable, close the doors to all grotesque, erogenous or “corporal” interpretation of any kind. We are witnessing nudity as the pure embodiment of sincerity, as the final tearing of the seven veils of consciousness. Amador, going beyond figurative literalness, undresses himself in his two matriarchal ancestors. He strips his inherited essences; on which he consolidates in order to project himself in time and history, certain of his past, of his identity. He turns to his mother and grandmother into caryatids supporting his life and his existential principles. They are themselves, Mother and Daughter, vertices of a Trinity which is completed by their spirits’ heir: the artist, on whom they have bet as the last sublimation of their values.

[Antonio Enrique González Rojas] Cienfuegos, 1981. BA in Journalism. Novelist and art critic. His texts appear in El Caimán Barbudo, Noticias de Arte Cubano, Cine Cubano, among other Cuban and foreign magazines and anthologies negra 29 negra

photoMANIA A common place, a strange place: notes about Leandro Feal’s photography [Michel Mendoza Viel]

hat lends beauty to these photographs by Leandro Feal, shall never come from the alleged glamor of the revolutionary heroic memory, and much less from the proximity with its symmetrical reverse, that is, as you all know, that kind of cold and ceremonial passion for the architecture of Havana in ruins.

Located at the opposite end, this visual artist’s essays are usually located in dark rental rooms, inside bars, at parties in the suburbs, in locations where the floating and bland identity mobilizes all types of furtive acceptances; spaces in which photography may be a way of acting on their own or alien bodies, and become a kind of erotic elegy, never an epic one.1 Not in vain is his territory as a photographer also that of small parties where naked bodies of artists and dissidents are exhibited, the small and colorful universe of punk friends who still remain in Cuba, while being photographed (using very wide angles) between happiness and foolhardiness. I think these photos are part of the new iconography of nomadism and extraterritoriality, especially because during this exploration of social interactions -whether it is in Berlin, Barcelona, Havana, Madrid-, the work of Leandro Feal Bonachea induces an interpretation -a bit similar to what happens in films like: And what time is it over there? (Tsai Ming Liang, 2001) and Waiting for Happiness (Abderrahamane Sissako, 2002)- regarding the “floating population” that emphasizes the subtle pervasiveness of displacement, the continuous replacement of identity and cultural boundaries, where violence and enjoyment of everyday life are the seismographs of the new geopolitical files. In that sense, we should look back at, Jacques Rancière and his beautiful definition of photography -that “writing of light, an entry of life in the common light of a memorable (1) The similarity of eandro Feal’s works with certain áreas of José A. Figueroa works (I reffer to works by Figueroa such as Rafael Savín y Diana Fernández, 1965; y Navarro y Diana en la piscina del Riviera, 1966), is notable.

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from the series Almost Blue [Leandro Feal]

photoMANIA

from the series Con jamón, lechuga y petipuá [Leandro Feal]

text”-,2 to notice better why it is that from these portraits emerges in harmless gestures, almost casually, the fragile otherness of the expelled.3 Because what really counts for this set of photos by Leandro Feal4 are those ethical moments of solitude or pleasure, those moments during which, located in the panoptic theater of globalization, we discover how pleasure shines on the face of une passante, or we think that we find in some group portraits -beyond the discussion regarding the feasibility of hedonism as a (2) Jacques Rancière, Figuras de la Historia, Editorial Eterna Cadencia, Buenos Aires, 2013, p. 22. (3) However, if the subjects portrayed by Feal almost always portray the enjoyment of participating in a game, it is because in these meetings the artist doesn’t stands in the place of a witness but of a participant. Far from that vulgar intimacy terrorism exercised by the paparazzi –an exercise whose only value seems to be the outrageous display of someone else’s crime-, in Feal’s portraits we never find that obscene display of mechanical fatality, or uprooting. (4) The exhibition Breakfast was inaugurated as Collateral to the XII Biennial of Havana, in collaboration with Julio Cesar Llópiz, in which both artists showed their most recent creations, as well as the personal exhibit Vivir la fotografía sin vivir de ella.

form of civil insubordination- an absolutely contemporary (and brilliant) formulation of the taedium vitae. But it would be enough to take look at the images of these beings and floating objects in the barely known territory which is called contemporaneity, to understand that these photographs are also of the “specter of history”; they belong to a time when, just like the large ones, small daily displacements also matter, line crossings, minimalistic manifestations, almost imperceptible, of geopolitics. If we pay attention to the Georges Perec of Espèces d’espaces, a time to live, is still moving from one space to another trying to get hit as little as possible.

[Michel Mendoza Viel ] Havana, 1980. BA in Religious Sciences from the ISECRE, he has also studied Psychology and Theology. He presently works as Marketing Specialist at Ediciones UNIÓN.

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photoMANIA Eager visions. David Velázquez’ Photography [Yenny Hernández Valdés]

e see it, we look at it, we photograph it, and we manipulate it for a particular purpose... These could be the steps -very elementary- that the artist follows when shooting a photograph. Add to this, also, the fact of sometimes being the creator, the object, the model, the idea and the center of his own work. Indeed, the photographer David Velázquez combined all in Ansias (Yearnings), a collateral exhibit of the XII Havana Biennial and presented in one of the vaults of the historical MorroCabaña Military Park. Self-reference in photography is a field well liked and exploited by many of our artists, who assume the language of

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Súplica [David Velázquez]

photography as the best means to re-semantize, re-catalog, re-contextualize and represent that which the human eye sees as reality. It is an attempt to give another dimension to what we see, of projecting an illusory parable of what surrounds us. If we take a close look at the exhibited pieces, there is an evident interest not to conceal, hide, not to say or twist the message being conveyed. The metaphor makes an appearance, association, allusion and inter-textuality also, but not with the purpose of complicating its understanding. While interpretations may be different –and indeed they are, because that is where the polysemy of art lies, they’re all are intertwined, with social, existential, and

photoMANIA

Maíz tierno [David Velázquez]

political edges, as well as the contextualization of the contemporary Cuban subject. And the issue is that David does not obliterate within his individuality, even if he is the exemplary-figurative component of his work; but on the contrary he clears the personal/individual limits in order to project a feeling that reaches the macro levels of society. The photographer blends and contrasts in unison, as challenging resource to absolutism, to caprices, to the trivialities that befall. The works provide the necessary data, the lights to decode the message. Everything is where it should and must be: the military uniform beside his flag, the guano hat leading a city, the revolver together with the corn, cubes and sea at your disposal.

The settings, the areas of light, the shadows, the chromaticism, the model, the props that complement it, ultimately all the works, exhibit a kind of rich romantic bubbling: questions, assumptions, allegories, suggestions, expectations, YEARNINGS. It is from these yearnings that new feelings, new thoughts, new criticism, new suspicions are based. That is the maneuver carried out by David Velazquez, and, -in my understanding- one of the greatest achievements of this exhibit. [Yenny Hernández Valdés] Havana, 1992. BA in Art History, Faculty of Arts and Letters of the University of Havana.

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photoMANIA From Mambo to Hip Hop [Claudio Sotolongo]

oe Conzo Jr.’s photographs had a space at the Cuban Art Factory. The exhibit which exposure brought to Havana a sample of this New Yorker’s work was inaugurated as part of the AM-PM producers’ workshop. His work documented -with over 10 000 negatives-, the early stages of hip hop in the neighborhoods of New York. Linked from a very young age, thanks to family circumstances, to the city’s musical movement, his interest in photography allowed him and the groups he photographed to have a visual history, which years later has helped establish the origins and early presentations of many of this genre’s musicians. In a totally unconventional presentation, thanks to the work of Ariel Fernandez and Irolan Maroselli, the images are juxtaposed in a retinal effect that brings us closer to the dynamics of life in New York during the period in which this musical movement emerged. Conzo Jr.’s photos are a genuine documentary work that leads us, without aesthe-

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s/t [Joe Conzo Jr.]

tic mediations, to the public lives of those artists. Conzo is essential to be able to understand New York’s Hip Hop culture during its emergence; because of this his work has taken on the dual role of document and artwork. While his work is highly appreciated due to its composition and lighting treatment, it is also valued because it captured a unique moment in the history of this musical genre. The photographer also had tight relations with the Bronx Puerto Rican musical scene, of which he also captured images that reflect the ambiance and spirit of that period. The artist, who for years turned away from photography, has returned and his immense work has come back to light through several personal exhibitions in the United States and Europe, and now in Cuba, where it has been a real pleasure to get to admire these images. [Claudio Sotolongo] La Habana, 1982. Designer of the UH Editorial of the Faculty of Arts and Letters, and professor of the EFCH.

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For more information EFCH, 21st Street e/ Paseo y A, Vedado. Tel.: 7832 6592 www.efchabana.com https://www.facebook.com/EFCH.online

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Developing

Yuri Obreg贸n:

a sacredly obscene citizen X [Racso Morej贸n]

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uri Obregon, photographer and founder of Cyclops, shares some of the provocations that have launched him in the contemporary art scene in Cuba. Do you assume reality from photography or is it the reverse process, in that sense what is your aesthetic assumption being a young artist? I would dare say that the process is quite complex, I have reached a point where both modes (photography-reality, reality-photography) merge into the same intention. I consider myself as a chronicler of my era, full of contradictions, fears, despair... but also dreams. I simply feel the need to channel all these conflicts and I do it with full responsibility, from the position of an artist committed to his generation. What aspects of reality concern you to the point of expressing yourself, through photography, in disagreement with them? I think being born in itself is quite disturbing. We have no way of deciding where, when or under what conditions or ideals we would like to grow or be formed, we only have the possibility of trying to modify or adjust them in such a manner that may be beneficial for the growth or development of each human being. And this is never easy; the cost can be very high. You always have to sacrifice, relinquish, leave things behind and sometimes forgive. Why don’t you like the street to take pictures, why do you prefer the studio to conceive your ideas? It may be due in large part to my education as a painter, in which I try to build my own images, the kind of work that I would like to see, which is best in tune with me. I like to have full (or almost full) control over what I’m representing, materialize these images that I constantly have a rolling around in my head. Actually building them makes me feel them more mine, even though often they’re influenced by other works or other authors. On the street, I feel like I’m working with images that already exist, which were created by somebody else, which are not mine. It’s like stealing or begging for a good photo. I can only decide on the framing or the angle of the shot, and that way of working is too tedious for me. I prefer to leave that to other photographers who master this manner of representation, and achieve very good works. How do you formulate your creative process? Largely I behave like a sponge, anything can be a stimulus (a book, a phrase, a video, a play, a speech, some news, a comment, etc.), I take this to my reality, to my experience as a human being. Then I try to find out why and how, in order to fill in the gaps, or have a clearer view of my intentions. This process is always accompanied by an image, the principle is quite simple, which then starts taking shape and becomes clearer, and that’s when I start to sketch it (sometimes this step can take me months), when I’m completely clear, or the

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DEVELOPING

Yuri Obregón

image fully convinces me, I then start looking for the necessary elements to take the picture (wardrobe, props, models). Regarding the models, I do not adapt the idea to fit the people who are posing, but rather, they are the ones that adapt to my idea. Sometimes it takes me a long time to find the exact person. Why did you consider the referential character of your biography as an artistic and critical behavior? I’m always questioning my existence, my individuality within the context in which I live and I have had to live. From what position I interact with others, and what those links that connect us are like. I think the deeper you look within yourself; you can understand others, the community much better. What does Homeland mean to you and how do you reflect it in your work? I’ve never asked myself the exact concept of homeland, I don’t only feel it as the place and the time in which I’ve had to live, but it rather goes beyond an emotional relationship of space-time. In a certain manner it has to do with the conditions that have shaped me as an individual, or have predetermined my life, it’s what constantly nourishes me, and then I represent it from my view of reality. What has been your personal experience with your exhibition projects and the art galleries to which you have presented them? In fact it hasn’t been favorable, I work an aesthetic concept which is not so in tune with our cultural policies. Nor is it an easy proposition to sell, or which could be used to decorate the walls of an apartment in New York. I’m aware that my work is directed towards a smaller audience, people who bet on another type of aesthetics, who are willing to break with previously tested formulas, who approve of works which go beyond the so called political correctness. Our scarce cultural institutions generally lack this, so this makes it difficult to carry out many of my projects, so they are stored on a CD or on my PC, with the utopia of fulfilling them in the future or abroad. What do you propose to the viewer beyond your own work and what do you expect from him? Actually I’m proposing a mindset, a stance, which may or may not be correct, but it is sincere. My work is a stimulus, a dialogue with the recipients, a proposal. They are responsible for knowing what they can do, or where they can use what I’m offering or proposing. Each one will use it according to their experience or their level of knowledge, as they are also free to fully discard it as another option. Why do the titles of your images have that semantic meaning that even competes with the works themselves? In my work the piece and the title are the same thing, I don’t conceive them separately, I see the work as the bait and the title as the hook; it would useless just to have bait or only a hook. It has to work as a whole. I think

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Yuri Obregón

DEVELOPING

that in this lies the effectiveness of my proposal. Any of my images could work easily without title, but I think it would be missing my real feelings, my true intentions or the actual meaning of my work. Otherwise I would only be a creator of provocative images. Many of your photos have the nude body as their medium; however, you confess that you don’t do nude photos. What do you suggest then with the nude body in your work? Actually the body (the other’s) is my main raw material to express my concerns or conflicts as a human being, it is the means not the end in itself. I think the body is what is truly ours, what really belongs to us, where we have total control, where we can always take refuge. The fact that people choose to lend it to me, to display it according to my idea, I think that that’s something important in my work, to create a bond, a complicity, a pact... I just I explore it and use the part that best fits or represents the idea in question. You are provocative with your work, almost aggressive in the proposals you present to the public. Why are you so interested in provoking? Mainly, I think it’s due to the desire not to go unnoticed, we’re living in an era in which we are constantly bombarded with images of all kinds, in a few seconds we are able to consume a large quantity of them, but we only pay attention to a few. I think this is the way I’ve found to steal a few seconds more from the viewer, to make him assimilate this image without forgetting it. So he can establish a dialogue with it, confront it, challenge it and finally understand it. How do you see the relationship of new photographers with the old school, let’s say the already established photographers? Which are the consistencies and inconsistencies which you appreciate in these generations of artists? There will always be conflicts of one generation with another, an already established one, which are trying to make their legacy endure and the other that is trying to impose itself, of creating its space, of legitimizing itself. I think the important thing is to know each one’s place, from my position as a young artist I feel indebted to all Cuban photography, my development and evolution have been determined by our masters of the lens which offered us their experience and knowledge, directly or not, all these great creators are the base on which the novel generation of artists rests and becomes stronger. Each generation looks for the tools or codes that best suit their time, we belong to another decade, another time, it’s our responsibility to represent our experiences, and we do so from a more unbiased stance in relation to the previous generations, we choose the grotesque rather than the lyrical, directness rather than subjectivity, we open ourselves to global codes, to speak of ourselves, of the individual. Our generation has other concerns and also other forms of representation.

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DEVELOPING

Yuri Obregón

How important do you think photography is when configuring an aesthetic and artistic discourse which endorses the creator’s responsibility? Photography has a unique characteristic which other art forms don’t have; it is the direct relationship with reality. When we look at a photographic image we can’t stop thinking, that that existed, that it was real. This makes it less subjective, and at the same time more effective or shocking, even when the receptor knows that what he has observed is fiction. I particularly look for that reaction that photography offers me, if I were to paint any of my images; it would not be the same, the technical virtuosity, would go beyond the idea, the concept. I like that the people interacting with my work have reactions to it, that the passivity which is usually contained in twodimensional works which hang on a wall be broken. Tell me about your need to create a space like Cyclops to dialogue with photographers and their work, how do you set it up and which authors do you prefer to invite these meetings? Cyclops was born from the needs a group of young artists had (collective project F8) to show our work. It was an alternative that arose due to the lack of spaces and projects that show the work of emerging artists. We also wanted to create a space for debate, exchange, and ways of thinking and of assuming photography. Then it started taking another scale, despite the limited coverage and support we had, many young artists began to participate in the project; despite having very good turnout, the project was never of interested to any critic or renowned artist, and we were always sort of peripheral and something not really serious for any art institution, even though we had some reviews in the Arte Cubano newspaper, in which several references to project have been made, or other promotional spaces such as the thesis that an Art History student did regarding our project. During two years Cyclops held monthly meetings, in which each time we had five photographers showing their dossiers. The project organizers set out to not censor or discriminate against anyone. We only limited ourselves to organize them by themes, and the maturity of the proposed works. We were always interested in young artist or those less favored by the institutions. After a while, I decided to pick up the Cyclops project once again, FAC gave us a space, this time I intend to give it a different dynamic, take it another way, although I not totally sure how I’ll do it yet. But I would like it to continue even if I’m not heading it. Teach to form photographers, rather than “take pictures” is another of your life experiences. What can you tell me about it, and what has been your experience with these courses you give? I think we enjoy the privilege of having excellent photographers, artists who have a very strong and interesting work both inside and outside of Cuba. But we also have the disadvantage of not having institutionalized photography schools, educational centers with a defined profile, regarding the purpose of the type of photography be it artistic, journalistic, wedding or any other. Many young photographers, self-taught of course, get to master the art but they lack history, concepts, and feelings in their photos. The fact that many photographers have decided

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Yuri Obregón

DEVELOPING

to create spaces, on their own, to teach photography, is great, but I feel that in many cases they are too focused on the techniques and not on other aspects. They create people who shoot lots of pictures, sometimes very good ones, but you can’t notice their concern as an individual. With Cyclops I’ve seen, that some artists have a group of images grouped as a series, but when they explain them you feel as there is a vacuum, that they found a formula that worked for them and they repeated it. As for my experience as a teacher, I want the student to not only learn the technique, but to see further, even if he doesn’t become a professional photographer, even if it’s just as a hobby. But for them to be able to recognize when a cultural product, of any kind, is good or bad. Those are my objectives as a teacher, trying to offer them useful tools that encourage them to think, to question, to have a knowledgeable opinion. What is your opinion on contemporary Cuban photography? In general, I think our photography is in very good health, there are always people with good proposals, with the desire to do things, of presenting different things to make us think; although our cultural institutions are quite behind in this aspect. In many of the exhibitions which I have visited in recent times, mainly by young artists, I have seen very fresh works, of a high-level, and with pretty solid concepts, despite these authors’ young careers. I think there will always be artists who make us proud of our Cuban photography. What project are you working on right now? I’m always immersed in several projects, but the most important thing now is the Cyclops Laboratory in the Twelfth Biennial of Havana. With the F8 collective, I am also working on my solo exhibition this year, and for November I have the Body Photography Salon, a project I carry out at the Mariano Rodriguez Gallery at the Villa Panamericana, and in this second edition I want it to have a competitive nature . As well as continuing with Cyclops on the second Thursday of each month at the Cuban Art Factory, and two or three more things I don’t want to mention yet.

[Racso Morejón] Havana, 1965. Poet and cultural promoter. He is included in the anthology Rapsodias, selección de poesía contemporánea, (Editores Bianchi, Montevideo, 2006) and in El ojo de la luz. Antología de poetas y artistas plásticos cubanos (Diana Ediciones). His poems have been published in magazines like El Caimán Barbudo and has collaborated with other literary reviews as Cubaliteraria y Esquife.

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DEVELOPING

Yuri Obreg贸n

N谩useas, from the series Citizen X. 2011

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Yuri Obreg贸n

DEVELOPING

Nostra piedad, from the series Citizen X. 2011

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DEVELOPING

Yuri Obreg贸n

A la salud de nuestros ca铆dos, from the series Frozen. 2012

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Yuri Obreg贸n

DEVELOPING

A煤n crees que te deseo, from the series Frozen. 2012

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Novel Innocent bodies. Fracturing social taxonomies [Yenny HernĂĄndez ValdĂŠs]

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A statement of any category which is constructed as marginal within the scope of the discourse, may provide elements of aesthetic resistance and innovation. ALBERTO NOUSELLES

significant example of nude photography work in our country is the artist Eduardo Rodríguez Sardiñas (Havana, 1982), self-taught in this discipline. An English graduate of the University of Havana, the young photographer began his journey spontaneously due to his attraction to the naked body. His work as an artist of the lens evolved towards a superior technique while studying at the Cabrales del Valle Academy of Arts & Photography, skillfully inserting himself in the most transgressed circuit of nude photography in our country. Approaches such as homoeroticism and homosexuality are perceptible in Eduardo Rodriguez’ poetry, who based on the socially accepted terms, works the naked body from a very personal perspective. In his works he presents a sexuality/homosexuality that generates controversy, dialogues, questions about the relationships that occur between individuals of the same sex, and between them and their reality. All this with a strong interest in reflecting cycles of self-recognition of the gay subject; as well as the society’s reaction in assuming a “different” sexuality. The naked male body has become the main means of the artist’s aesthetic process, providing an ideal excuse for his social speculations, using the corporeal as a way to express a poetic art bordering the individual/collective. This is influenced by the fact that the artist is a homosexual subject that presents himself uncut before society through homoerotic photography. Possessing and knowing the male body allows him to generate a strong artistic discourse that causes the viewer to be startled: from self-recognition and self-understanding, to repulsion and a more heterosexual stance, which may even become homophobic. The naked body becomes for the photographer his favorite area to articulate a body language that extends itself from self-assertion, paucity and the denial of the male body, up to its most erotic pose and the most pleasant dedication to society. Rodríguez Sardiñas accomplishes photography through which he shows a rebellious views regarding what is socially established as masculine, manly, macho. He winks sarcastically towards that despotic gaze that attempts to preserve a regime of heterosexual behavior, presenting such a strong content as HIV/AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome) and MSM (Men who have Sex with other Men), which constitute personal phenomena for the artist. To present himself to the world with an iconography that responds to the express desire of conveying pain, a sense of powerlessness over his social non-acceptance makes Eduardo Rodriguez a competent candidate for the most recent study of nudes in our nation’s photography. In his series Diecisiete/Seventeen (2009) the male body is a means to discourse on questions of reality. The artist was motivated to prepare this series because seventeen years had passed since the hard loss a brother diagnosed HIV positive. A hunched male body whose nakedness consists of scraps of newspaper with marked words makes up one of the pieces. Accompanied by a circular mirror from which the reflection of the model emerges, the body lays on a mutilated tree trunk from whose bark a taciturn and gloomy subject is born. “Eduardo Rodriguez questions the relations established between the subjects, both at an individual and at a social level, assuming a sexual identity”.1 The naked male body stands as a metaphor of a feeling that blurs the boundaries between the individual and the collective. In this manner, the photographer places the model in a sphere which more than

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Descubrimiento / Discovery, 2009

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Novel

personal is public; making him an accomplice of the social tensions that overwhelm subjects wielded by an orthodox education to heterosexuality. Morphologically we are presented with a body in a fetal pose, which after a few seconds of absorbing it, its position starts to disturb us. An arm holding a mirror, the other clutching his chest, both legs bent and stiff, his head low and his torso bent, causing an uncomfortable feeling both for the model who is posing, as well as for the viewer that’s looking at him. Such body contraction, reinforced by expressions such as I felt the world was falling apart and sexual relation, declare a process of meditation regarding sexual identity and its consequences. In Diecisiete / Seventeen the formation of contemporary masculinity is revealed, based on a subversion of hackneyed hetero stereotypes, in which the naked model is presented as a mediator between the persevering homosexual and the sentencing heterosexual. Descubrimiento / Discovery consists of two bodies whose torsos and heads are immersed in an aura of shrink wrap and wire which absorbs them. We’re in the presence of reflected bodies, one completely naked, while his reflection has a skin full of words that protects his nakedness, while dealing with HIV/AIDS as the artist’s personal mark. Hurtful, precise, provocative words are always found. Examples include expressions such as epidemic, protect, HIV, risk of infection, which are marked in red on the body of the model, a color that reaffirms HIV in the design. I want to present male bodies covered with texts full of marked words. From the beginning I wanted to use as actual texts of prevention materials and documents that show the number of AIDS cases that there are in Cuba with the consequent deaths. So I looked for this information on the materials that spoke of transmission between men and marked the words that could be connected with the subject, always depending on how they were read.2 The real body “discovers” itself facing its reflection, the latter becoming the center from which, and with which, the artist intends to express the real polarity between acceptance/repression. Acceptance and repression of an ignorant society, which disdains anything that does not meet their standards of coexistence, all this reinforced by the partial or total lack of knowledge regarding such a disease. The halo that traps both bodies and at the same time confronts them is a different universe of coexistence, a possible area of relationships in which there is neither contempt nor disregard towards those who have raised their sexuality. That’s why this fence serves as space for acceptance of a subject which is still currently repressed in our society, is a free zone devoid of any homophobic rejections and considerations. Prejuicios inmorales / Immoral prejudices is an obvious example of an individual feeling that reproduces collectively. Although compositionally balanced, both subjects are projected as a body-knot in which the contractions of the torsos, arms and thighs cause certain visual tedium. These praxitellic bodies, full of muscles, become aggressive in their pose, trying to redeem themselves from those sexual and gender identity stereotypes built in the collective mentality. The strength with which the hands press the torsos is a way to get rid of that heterosexual and homophobic feeling. The fact that the bodies appear again with a skin made of newspaper clippings, where the phrase immoral prejudices is prevalent, reaffirms the attempt to subvert any marginalizing condition (1) Samuel Hernández Dominicis, “El cuerpo, sus metáforas y otros relatos de ficción”, personal exhibition of the artist Eduardo Rodríguez Sardiñas (Catalog). Havana, Sala Villena, UNEAC, May 14-21, 2009. (2) Interview given by Eduardo Rodríguez Sardiñas, Havana, February, 2014.

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Diecisiete / Seventeen, 2009

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Adoraci贸n / Adoration, 2009

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s/t, 2009

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Novel

of a different sexuality. The contracted models are a metaphor of a macro-social phenomenon subtly exposed by the photographer, reinforced by the relationship between black and white. In addition to the body’s fragmentation, the artist is interested in a shift in capturing the faces. The absence or camouflage of these faces allows him to discuss, as an anonymous individual, on issues of social background. The corporeal architecture, devoid of any accessories, becomes the altar that shows a common feeling. Moreover, the use of ropes as elements that subjugate and subdue is used as a resource to insinuate the dominant social tensions. The bonds of the subjects metaphorically reveal the impositions that have been conceived in human mentality. Similarly, the repeated use of shrink-wrap is another of the photographer’s discursive resources. As a protective layer, the shrink-wrap works as an element of another universe, out of reach of the pollution of unstoppable moral obfuscations. This distancing from an exterior contaminated by prejudice may be perceived by the use of reflected naked bodies. The use of the mirror becomes an aesthetic resource to deconstruct questions about sexual identity, allowing the subject to confront himself and lead him towards his own acceptance, which would generate further social acceptance. A critical look at the subjects confined by society to miserable and sordid premises continues to be explicit in Eduardo Rodriguez’ works. His series Diecisiete/Seventeen is an honest tribute to those subjects who defy moral prejudices, evidenced through the insistence of presenting the naked body through the shock and despair of these poses. The artist’s production during the first decade of this century is torn between the morphological preciousness of his models, traditional photographic techniques and digital image exploitation. The excellent arrangement of lights, the interest in high contrast, the model’s projection in front of the camera, are great choices in Rodriguez Sardiñas’ photographic style. However, the presentation of the naked body as a continent of senses is the backbone of all his work. That’s what the artist expresses when he says: “I do this type of photography because I like the body, all my nudes are male because with these I find to the most efficient way to express myself [...]”.3 The artist summarizes social, cultural and political postures by the figuration of pleasure and anguish of naked male bodies. Eduardo Rodríguez advocates the need for a breakdown of sexist, homophobic and accusatory conceptions. He endeavors to create works unbiased of any social, sexual, or cultural stereotype of the gay male subject. His command of the photographic trade ensures an alluring connection between image, text, concept and the subject’s projection.

(3) Idem. [Yenny Hernández Valdés] Ver p. 33.

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the

e n i l s e cloth

54 s/tnegra [Ariel Maceo]

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the clothesline

s/t [Alejandra Gonzรกlez]

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the clothesline

s/t [Alejandra Gonzรกlez]

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the clothesline

s/t [Catherine Van Hoof]

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the clothesline

s/t [César Vilá]

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the clothesline

Desertores [Samuel Gonzรกlez]

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the clothesline

Same shit, diferent color [Sergio Oliva]

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the clothesline

Marcha [Paul Sosa]

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the clothesline

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POEM

Safety word The document is signed the parties are prepared to fulfill the requirements one of them to provide their services skillfully the other to pay the agreed sum. The site has been prepared the parties take their places one on a couch with her legs spread the other in front of her, kneeling. The preamble has been completed the parties are preparing to move to another phase one to dominate the other to be dominated. And domination involves risks. For example, here is a chained body. If the dominating party pulls the right end of the chain pressure increases suffering increases pleasure increases. But if the dominating party pulls the left end of the chain pressure increases suffering increases pain increases the boundary is crossed the agreement is violated. No choice but to say the word. More no word is safe nowadays.

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s/t [Sadiel Mederos Bermúdez]

[Anisley Negrín] Santa Clara, 1981. Storyteller and poet. She has published, among other titles: Temporada de patos (Prize “Alcorta” of Literature, Ed. Cauce, 2008), Diez cajas de fósforos (Prize “David”, Ed. Unión, 2009), Mundo Báthory (Prize “Hermanos Loynaz”, Ed. Loynaz, 2011) y Todos vamos a ser canonizados (Prize “Sed de Belleza”, 2013). She has also obtained mentions in the “Julio Cortazar” Latin American Story Prize in 2008 and 2011.

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