RECOMMENDED READINGS. (NOV. 2021)


La cámara como método. La fotografía moderna de Grete Stern y Horacio Coppola. 

Natalia Brizuela y Alejandra Uslenghi (compilers). AAVV. Eterna Cadencia Editora. Buenos Aires. 2021. 


Quarto (22 x 14.2 cm), 541 pp., blank. Paperback publisher binding.


Its reading is enjoyable, provides new theoretical contributions, and seduces. And this despite the fact that the challenge was very high: to focus the gaze again on the work of two fundamental pillars of modern photography in Argentina meant exposing oneself to the risk of repetition, especially when these camera masters have been the protagonists of numerous essays. in our country, and more recently in the United States and Europe. A review of these trajectories appears in the Introduction to the volume, tracing a perspective view that moves away from the common places assigned to each artist. However, the challenge was overcome with new contributions that contribute and enrich the theoretical corpus already published and, in addition, a documentary archive with the most outstanding early reviews, those that marked the course of a modern interpretation, gathers in just under one hundred and fifty pages. of photography and through which the circle of intellectual relationships in which these photographers were inserted in the Buenos Aires of 1940s can be seen. The reproduction in this section of the texts written by the photographers themselves together with several interviews acquires a great testimonial value. The sum clearly justifies the effort and gives us a valuable title for the development of Argentine historiography.


La cámara como método (in English, The camera as a method) includes nine essays -the two longest, signed by the publishers-, addressing tight-knit aspects of Stern and Coppola's production. Alejandra Uslenghi's analysis updates the reading of the photomontages of the magazine Idilio and its link with the formative stage of Grete in Weimar Germany and the artist Hanna Höch- and the one signed by Natalia Brizuela that closes the first part of the book is introduced in the modernity of the photography of both authors. Likewise, it includes texts that the publishers identify as “foundational”, we refer to Luis Priamo's essay on Grete Stern, the first comprehensive approach to her work, and that of Adrián Gorelik and his focus on Coppola's photography, with particular emphasis on his first two shots published in the book Evaristo Carriego by Borges. Other essays cover specific aspects of each photographer's artistic itinerary: Verónica Tell, David Oubiña and Mauricio Lissovski delve into Coppola's modern urban gaze, his relationship with the cinema, and his documentary work on Aleijadhino's sculptures in Brazil. While Jodie Roberts and Clara Masnatta explore Grete Stern's work on urban architecture and portraiture.



The work offers another rare virtue in Argentine publications: it brings together articles that visualize tensions between them, such as the one signed by Ignacio Aguiló, who, when addressing Grete Stern's series on the aborigines of the Chaco region, makes a critical rereading of a text Foundation on the subject, "Grete Stern and the paisanos of the Gran Chaco", written by Luis Priamo for the edition of the book Aborígenes del Gran Chaco. Fotografías de Grete Stern (Fundación Antorchas - Fundación CEPPA. Buenos Aires. 2005). Aguiló seeks to detach himself from the biographical power of the photographer to place his work among the aborigines of northern Argentina within a historical journey of those practices developed in that region since the end of the 19th century with the ethnographic use of images and in parallel, the rise of the postcards. For Aguiló, Grete Stern represents the break in the scientific tenor of these photographic records, giving rise to a new visuality.


In the same way, Natalia Brizuela's essay -"Grete Stern, Horacio Coppola and the question of modern photography in Argentina"- sets out from the beginning "to question a very specific presumption that organizes the stories that are told about Argentine photography: the so-called 'modernity' that critics past and present have consistently seen at work in the photographic practices of Horacio Coppola and Grete Stern from about 1927 to 1967. " Brizuela's contribution proceeds with rigor on certain topics installed at the academic and market level, such as the artistic union of both authors, Coppola and Stern - in that hierarchical order - reunited "in a perfect combo"; in his opinion, in an error that she is responsible for dismembering.


The artistic and historical richness of Stern and Coppola allows us to find new perspectives and also to enunciate other research spaces not yet carried out, such as the one indicated by Uslenghi about a comparative study of Grete Stern's self-portraits, “a job to do”. The intervention of Alejandra Uslenghi, beyond editing with Brizuela, contributes with a meticulous approach to collage -the photomontages- as an artistic expression, from a historical and gender perspective.


In these new approaches and cross-glances, as well as in the dialogue they pose with the archive of “historical” texts that is made available to the reader, our judgment about The camera as a method is based: an essential reading title for the knowledge of photography and Argentine "modern" art.




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