fototazo: Erika Diettes

Showing posts with label Erika Diettes. Show all posts

5.10.2017

LatAm f100: Narciso Contreras and Erika Diettes

Sub-Saharan illegal migrants reach through the window of a cell in the Garabuli detention centre, pleading for
water, cigarettes, food and their release.
From the series "Libya: A Human Marketplace" 2016 © Narciso Contreras

fototazo has asked a group of 50 curators, gallery owners, blog writers, photographers, academics and others actively engaged with Latin American photography to pick two early career photographers whose work deserves recognition.

This project aims to highlight great work being made in the region today and also to provide a starting point in both English and Spanish for exploring contemporary Latin American photography. LatAm f100 is a collaboration between fototazo and the photographer and educator Jaime Permuth.

Today we continue the series with selections by Elizabeth Avedon. Her biography follows her selections.

The series also includes responses from Molly Roberts, Mariela Sancari, Alonso Castillo, Paccarik Orue, Katrin Eismann, Dina Mitrani, Don Gregorio Anton, Cristina De Middel, Arturo Soto, Cecilia Fajardo-Hill, Guillermo Srodek-Hart, Yorgos Efthymiadis, Livia Animas, Juanita Bermúdez, Susana Raab, the pairing of Victoria Holguín and Daniella Benedetti, Emiliano Valdés, Muriel Hasbun, George Slade and Marta Dahó.

fototazo ha invitado a un grupo de 50 curadores, galeristas, escritores, fotógrafos, y académicos - entre otros individuos seriamente comprometidos con la fotografía latinoamericana - a escoger cada quién dos fotógrafos emergentes cuya obra sea merecedora de mayor reconocimiento.

Este proyecto es una manera de celebrar el gran trabajo que se lleva a cabo en la región. Asimismo, busca proporcionar un punto de partida bilingüe en inglés y en español a las audiencias que deseen explorar la fotografía contemporánea en latinoamérica. LatAm f100 es una colaboración entre fototazo y el fotógrafo y educador Jaime Permuth.

Hoy continuamos la serie con selecciones aportadas por Elizabeth Avedon. Encontrará su biografía al final del texto.

La serie también incluye contribuciones de Molly Roberts, Mariela Sancari, Alonso Castillo, Paccarik Orue, Katrin Eismann, Dina Mitrani, Don Gregorio Anton, Cristina De Middel, Arturo Soto, Cecilia Fajardo-Hill, Guillermo Srodek-Hart, Yorgos Efthymiadis, Livia Animas, Juanita Bermúdez, Susana Raab, el dúo de Victoria Holguín and Daniella Benedetti, Emiliano Valdés, Muriel Hasbun, George Slade y Marta Dahó.

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I was fortunate to meet Mexican photographer Narciso Contreras, the winner of the 7th Laureate Carmignac Photojournalism Award. I viewed his powerful exhibition, "Libya: A Human Marketplace" in Paris, accompanied by an elegantly designed monograph of the same name, co-published by Fondation Carmignac and Editions Skira. The beauty of the book belies the dangerous situations Contreras put himself in to document the brutal reality of human trafficking as he traveled through the complex tribal society of post-Gaddafi Libya in 2016.

Tuve la suerte de conocer al fotógrafo mexicano, Narciso Contreras, ganador del 7º Laureado premio de fotoperiodismo Carmignac. He visto su poderosa exposición "Libia: un mercado humano" en París, acompañada por una elegantemente diseñada monografía del mismo nombre, co-publicada por la Fundación Carmignac y Ediciones Skira. La belleza del libro contradice las peligrosas situaciones en que Contreras se puso al documentar la brutal realidad de la trata de seres humanos a medida que viajaba a través de la compleja sociedad tribal de Libia después de Gadafi en 2016.

Riddled with bullet holes, this civilian-style truck, covered in ISIL logos, has been discarded on the road to Abugrein,
in the west of Libya.
From the series "Libya: A Human Marketplace" 2016 © Narciso Contreras

An illegal sub-Saharan migrant is pictured downcast on the Tajoura shore after having been arrested in
the Mediterranean Sea by the Libyan coastguard in the west of Libya.
From the series "Libya: A Human Marketplace" 2016 © Narciso Contreras

The corpses of illegal sub-Saharan migrants lie in the morgue of Sabha City, after having been collected from the streets and
the desert during the previous days.
From the series "Libya: A Human Marketplace" 2016 © Narciso Contreras

A mentally ill migrant in one of the Surman detention centres on the west coast of Libya.
From the series "Libya: A Human Marketplace" 2016 © Narciso Contreras

In this Tuesday, Sep. 17, 2013 photo, an opposition fighter rests inside a cave at a rebel camp in the Idlib country side, Syria.
From the series "Syria: The War in No Man's Land" 2013 © Narciso Contreras

In this Friday, Sep. 27, 2013 photo, a displaced Syrian woman comforts her one-month old grandson inside a stone house
at the Kafr Ruma, ancient Roman ruins used as temporary shelter by those families who have fled from the heavy
fighting and shelling in the countryside of the Idlib province in Syria. Dozens of families settled in the ancient ruins known as
"The Forgotten City" and declared human heritage by UNESCO, when the clashes between opposition fighters and
government forces broke out in the region more than two years ago.
From the series "Syria: An Ancient Refuge for Those Fleeing Syria's War" 2013 © Narciso Contreras

Rebel fighters belonging to the Javata Harria Sham Qatebee watch over the enemy position during skirmishes at the
first line of fire in the Karmal Jabl neighborhood of the district of Arkup, northeast of Aleppo City.
From the series "Syria: Battle for Aleppo" 2016 © Narciso Contreras

In this Thursday, Nov. 29, 2012 photo, night falls on a Syrian-rebel controlled area as destroyed buildings, among those the
Dar Al-Shifa hospital, are seen in Sa'ar street after a warplane targeted the hospital last week, killing dozens of
medical staff and civilians in Aleppo, Syria's largest city.
From the series "Syria: Traces of War" 2012 © Narciso Contreras

In this Sunday, Sep. 22, 2013 photo, a Syrian man whom survived an airstrike with 60% of his body burned is helped down stairs on his way back home from the field hospital in Kafr Zita, a village turned into a battlefield where clashes between troops loyal to president
Bashar Al-Assad and opposition fighters have broken out as many opposition armed groups have launched a coordinated attack
over the Syrian army positions in the Idlib province countryside, Syria.
From the series "Syria: The War in No Man's Land" 2013 © Narciso Contreras

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I met Colombian photographer Erika Diettes several years ago at Review Santa Fe. Her exhibition "RIO ABAJO" ("Drifting Away") was composed of large images printed on glass of the clothing of Colombia's "disappeared" victims thrown in turbulent water to convey the saying "the rivers of Colombia are the world's largest graveyard". Her exhibition, "SUDARIOS" ("Shrouds"), are black and white portraits of women who are victims of armed conflict in Antioquia, Colombia, taken as they describe the dramatic experiences of the murders of their loved ones, which they have had to witness and survive.

Conocí a la fotógrafa colombiana Erika Diettes hace varios años en Review Santa Fe. Su exposición "RIO ABAJO" se compone de grandes imágenes impresas en vidrio, de la ropa de las víctimas "desaparecidas" de Columbia arrojadas en agua turbulenta para transmitir el dicho "Los ríos de Colombia son el cementerio más grande del mundo". Su exposición "SUDARIOS", son retratos en blanco y negro de mujeres víctimas del conflicto armado en Antioquia, Colombia, tomadas mientras describen las dramáticas experiencias de los asesinatos de sus seres queridos, que han tenido que presenciar y sobrevivir.

From the series "Relicarios" © Erika Diettes

From the series "Rio Abajo" © Erika Diettes

From the series "Silencios" © Erika Diettes

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Elizabeth Avedon is an independent curator and contributor to L'Oeil de la Photographie, profiling the world of photography. Former Director of Photo-Eye Gallery, Santa Fe and Creative Director for The Gere Foundation, Elizabeth has received awards and recognition for her exhibition design and publishing projects, including the retrospective exhibition and book, "Avedon: 1949–1979" for the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, among others; "Richard Avedon: In the American West" for the Amon Carter Museum, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and The Art Institute of Chicago; she has also recently curating several exhibitions at New York's Leica Gallery.

Elizabeth also teaches in the Masters of Digital Photography program and BFA Photography and Video department at the School of Visual Arts.

Elizabeth Avedon es curadora independiente y colaboradora de L'Oeil de la Photographie, perfilando el mundo de la fotografía. Ex Directora de Galería Photo-Eye, Santa Fe y Directora Creativa de la Fundación Gere, Elizabeth ha recibido premios y reconocimientos por su diseño exposiciones y proyectos de publicación, incluyendo la exposición retrospectiva y el libro, "Avedon: 1949-1979" para el Museo Metropolitano de Arte, Museo de Bellas Artes de Dallas, entre otros; "Richard Avedon: En el oeste americano" para el museo de Amon Carter, la galería de arte Corcoran, y el instituto del arte de Chicago; recientemente curando varias exposiciones en la Galería Leica de Nueva York.

Elizabeth también enseña en el programa de Maestros de Fotografía Digital y en el Departamento de Fotografía y Video en la Escuela de Artes Visuales.

5.27.2016

How to Start a Project: Erika Diettes

This is the latest in an ongoing series of short essays from photographers responding to the basic question, "What advice do you have for starting a project?" The series has featured replies from Judith Joy Ross, Irina Rozovsky, Alejandro Cartagena, Phil Toledano, Steven Ahlgren, Susan Lipper, Amani Willett, Lisa Kereszi, Eirik Johnson, Richard Renaldi, Brian Ulrich, Mark Steinmetz, Tim Davis, Nicholas Nixon and Jeff Whetstone.

Today we return to the question of starting a project with Erika Diettes. The text is presented first in a translation from Spanish, then in the original Spanish.

Erika Diettes has a Master's Degree in Anthropology. Her artistic production, linked from the very onset to photography, explores memory, pain and death from her multidisciplinary perspective. It directly confronts witnesses as well as victims of diverse social and political conflicts in works in which they are both protagonists and objects of study and contemplation, encompassing pain, loss and mourning. Her research, which range from images to essays, crafts texts and conferences in dissertations that deepen her experiences and knowledge about artistic interpretation, death and the dramatic socio-political contexts that lead to it.

Her work has been exhibited in different settings linked to the memory processes of various groups of victims in Colombia. Her work has also been exhibited in Colombian cultural institutions like the Museum of Antioquia, the Modern Art Museum of Bogota, the Colombian National Museum and the Colombian National University Museum, among others. In the international sphere, her works have been displayed in individual and collective exhibits at the Centro Cultural Recoleta (Recoleta Cultural Center, Buenos Aires), ExTeresa Arte Actual (Modern Art Museum, Mexico City), the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, and other institutions in the United States, Australia, Poland, Argentina, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Ecuador and Chile. Her work is part of important public and private collections in Colombia and the United States.

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All beginnings are difficult, even this interview...I have gone in a lot of circles, trying to think of something deeply inspiring to say. Thinking again and again about the beginning of my projects, however, I realized that to start a project, even if these are obvious words, the most important thing is the determination to start the project. Making the first picture of what, in the future, could become a huge project, an exhibition, a book, etc. is most important. Just by looking at an image you find the clue for the next image. An idea that never materializes fades, is lost, it does not exist. Or worse, it prevents you from moving forwards to another idea.

It is important to understand that many times what works perfectly in your mind as a wonderful idea might not work materialized in front of the camera. That is why my key recommendation is to build projects based in the images and outwards from images. While it is clear that the theoretical foundations are very important and will be reflected in the photographs, it is also very important to note that the image is the final product and that it is from the image that the viewer will come to understand the theoretical intention of the author.

Building, taking and seeing the image in the final medium in which we intend to show it in order to analyze it is key to developing the set of images that will make up a project. My last recommendation is to have perseverance to complete the project, and always be open to new opportunities that may arise along the way. Often the most important and definitive elements of a work are those that we will find in the search for the initial idea. No great work is the result of a moment of inspiration. I would dare say that great works are the result of much study, research, technical mastery, discipline, obsession and - above all - are an exercise in resistance.

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Todos los comienzos son difíciles, incluso el de esta entrevista, ... He tenido que darle muchas vueltas, pensando en lograr decir algo profundamente inspirador. Sin embargo, pensando una y otra vez en los comienzos de todos mis proyectos caí en cuenta que para empezar un proyecto, así sean las palabras más obvias, la determinación de empezarlo es lo más importante. Tomar la primera imagen de lo que en un futuro pueda convertirse en un proyecto enorme, una exposición, en un libro, etc es lo más importante. Sólo viendo una imagen uno encuentra la pista para la imagen que sigue. Una idea que no se materialice se difumina, se pierde, no existe. O lo que es peor, no permite que uno de paso a otra idea.

Es importante entender que muchas veces lo que funciona perfectamente en la cabeza como una idea maravillosa, puede no funcionar al materializarse frente a la cámara. Es por esto que mi recomendación esencial es construir los proyectos desde las imágenes y a partir de las imágenes. Si bien, es obvio que los fundamentos teóricos son importantísimos y se van a reflejar en las fotografías, es muy importante tener en cuenta que la imagen es el producto final y que es desde allí donde el espectador va a llegar a entender la intención teórica del autor.

Construir, tomar y ver la imagen para analizarla en el medio final en el que se pretende mostrar es clave para desarrollar el conjunto de imágenes que conformarán un proyecto. Mi última recomendación es tener perseverancia en lograr culminar el proyecto, siempre estando abierto a las nuevas posibilidades que se pueden presentar en el camino. Muchas veces los elementos más importantes y definitivos de una obra son elementos que uno va encontrando en la búsqueda de la idea inicial. Ninguna gran obra es el resultado de un instante de inspiración. Me atrevería afirmar que las grandes obras son el resultado de mucho estudio, investigación, maestría técnica, disciplina, obsesión y sobre todo son un ejercicio de resistencia.

11.08.2012

Review: Erika Diettes, "Sudarios"

BASICS
On October 25th, Bogotá-based visual artist Erika Diettes opened her traveling installation project Sudarios at Iglesia El Señor de las Misericordias in barrio Manrique, Medellín. The work has previously been shown in Houston, Santo Domingo, Bogotá, Buenos Aires and other cities. Sudarios is the Spanish word for "shroud."

SNAPSHOT OF THE WORK
The installation consists of twenty large-scale portraits printed on silk shrouds hung in the nave of the church. The women were photographed while retelling their stories of being forced to witness violence against their loved ones, a common practice during Colombia's civil conflict, and also - importantly - their life afterwards. The women are photographed in black and white, cropped just below the shoulders, eyes closed, unclothed. The images are approximately four and a half feet wide by seven and a half feet tall.

An audio interview, in Spanish, about the project can be found here under "Octubre 21." Diettes also talked about the work recently on Lenscratch and an audio interview between her and Jim Casper, Editor of Lens Culture, can be found here.

CURATION AND INSTALLATION
Diettes installed Sudarios under the auspices of the Museo de Antioquia. The work echoes the symmetry of Manrique's spectacular church. The translucent silk portraits hang in opposing pairings or centered along the axis of the nave at varying heights. Some are hung low enough for visitors to touch or caress the silk, part of the artist's intention. The portraits face the main entrance to the church. Her craftsmanship is exceptional.

COMMENTS ON THE EXHIBIT
Sudarios continues Diettes' explorations along the thematic lines of violence, suffering, and pain of Colombia's seemingly endless internal conflicts. These lines are extended from her previous projects, Rio abajo and A punta de sangre. Sudarios is the most realized of the trilogy in its double-sided treatment of these themes: the women depicted speak of the horrors witnessed as well as life after serving as witness to unthinkable human darkness.

This conceptual shift towards balancing horror with survival (or death with life) allows the project to move from respectful witness to active agent in terms of reframing Colombia's narrative and its violence inside its new historical moment of personal healing, international reconnection, increased security and stability, and plummeting murder rates. In short: Sudarios doesn't define Colombia and its people strictly through history and violence, but also through the future and healing, providing a more complete picture of the cycle of violence in Colombian society as the society continues to move towards a new era.

Diettes' work has received international acclaim and with reason. The large faces, frozen in the middle of describing personal traumas, float in the church as transcendent beings, neither completely of this world nor the next. At the inauguration, with the main church doors open, the silk shrouds shifted and moved in the evening breeze, bringing the women breath and animation, a sensation doubled by the translucence of the silk that allows light to permeate the portraits.

The movement, the light, and the silk balance the geometry of the formal square of the portraits as well as the architectural symmetry of the church. The size of the images and their placement at points of passage through the nave gives a sense of confrontation, but the subjects have closed or averted their eyes, are unclothed, and are in obvious emotional states of openness and vulnerability - any idea of confrontation becomes empathy instead.

The decisions to move this work off the walls as well as into alternative spaces are fundamental to the power of the project. I walked away, however, with lingering questions about the installation and particularly of the space chosen to show the work. On the whole they are minor and don't detract significantly from the work.

If Diettes unclothed the women to equalize and democratize their stories by eliminating clothing as signifiers of class, what about the varying heights of hanging the portraits? Height - especially in a Catholic church - creates hierarchy. I also wondered if the project was best served by shaping the installation to the symmetry of the church and the readings that could entail. Lastly, the height, light, and air of the church is vital to the work. Diettes has spoken in interviews about the importance of the sacredness of the church in relation to the sacredness of the pain these women have witnessed, as well as of the importance of the change in disposition when we enter a church and how that shapes how we approach her work. That being said, arguments could be mounted against churches as the vehicle for this work.

Church leaders have long been rumored as being involved in La Violencia in Colombia and of encouraging the murder of the political opposition. The church also brings with it a long history of violence and oppression more generally - from the crusades to heretic burnings to the Inquisition. This is far from a neutral space in terms of violence. It is also obviously symbolically hyper-charged, and while Diettes can point to elements of the church space and experience to support its choice as a venue for this installation - reverence, reflection, solemnity - other elements could be pointed to that compete with its intended themes - patriarchy, power, authority.

WRAP-UP
Sudarios is definitively the best show I've seen this year in the city, although I have to add that the photography exhibitions in Medellín are few and generally by photographers of less experience. I hope this show continues to establish Medellín on the international photography map and that the Museo de Antioquia will continue to invest in bringing in photography shows.

Diettes continues to establish herself along with Stephen Ferry as the two most recognized Colombian-based photographers internationally. Their work deserves the recognition.

I have to make a final point, however, that goes beyond their work and that is not intended as a criticism of either. Their projects, collectively focused on Colombia's violent history, are currently in the international eye and I understand that Diettes has a very personal tie to the subject matter, having discovered the murder of an uncle while watching television during Medellín's era as the most violent city in the world. The violence also continues here in Colombia and continues to affect individual lives in terrible ways. Yesterday ten campesinos were massacred twenty miles north of Medellín. That being said, violence in Colombia has dropped massively during the last two decades; Medellín's murder rate, for example, has dropped over 90% since the 1990's.

I continue to personally wait for international-caliber projects in Colombia that move beyond the singular, thin narrative of Colombia as violence to show other dimensions of a fascinating country. Do Diettes' projects continue to cement the equation of violence and Colombia internally and internationally? It could be argued they do, despite how Sudarios addresses life after violence. Her work is strong, however, and projects addressing the history of the country are necessary and important both as document and as part of a healing process. Perhaps what's needed, then, is the hope that other projects equal in strength arrive that paint more dimensions of the country to balance with her work and Ferry's Violentology.