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Mario Velez Salazar, Gabriel "Photography as a tool for magical thinking." Doctor
, Complutense University of Madrid, 2005
Keywords/Fields of Study : photography, Latin America, magic
Abstract: THE DAGUERROTYPE OF GOD:
A SINGULAR PHOTO ALBUM / ATLAS
ON THE FOOTPRINT OF THE MAGIC IN LATIN AMERICA.
For the ordinary user, the camera is an artifact that moves between double dimension. First, as the most complex technique, extraordinary and almost entirely inaccessible; and, as another aspect, in an even more intriguing facet, apprehensive qualities are attributed to the photo (to the camera as an instrument and to the image as a support). Powers that are destined to trap specific presences and allow their possessor to carry out all kinds of manipulations on what is contained therein. These uses are anchored in the orbit of magical thinking.
In this way, from the perspective of the magical instrumentalization of the photographic device, the course of this research led to the need to configure a relevant field of experimentation. One regulated by a series of conditions in the manner of a warp, whose threads, each one of them tightens the argumentation in a necessary way: thus, sheltered on the montage table of Aby Warburg, treading on Sophie Calle's footprint, following the journey of another Atlas, that of Jorge Luís Borges in the company of his wife / mother María Kodama, the scenario of exploration was limited to a route whose delimitation was produced by correspondence with another search, that of the geographical and conceptual continent of Latin America. The place where an artistic movement that, originated in Latin American, took root and brought together a series of works and artists who mixed creation, verisimilitude and magic in the same product. The same people who, trying to make sense of a sum so difficult to name, appropriated the suggestive characterization known as Magic Realism.
That is, if a phenomenon occurred in the literature from which we can borrow the reference and some analysis tools, it is based on the fact that such a thing happened chained to a historical evolution and a geography that cradled it. Likewise, when the nomenclature of Latin American photography is resorted to, not as a movement but as a mere classification, the argument of the topic that links this photograph with magic is used precisely, not only to say that it is present, but to affirm that it imposes itself by characterizing it, even giving it identity.
But the adoption of the frame of reference must be understood in its proper measure. The risk is explicit when resorting to a discourse that has been used in identity terms, tendentiously essentialist, especially if the singularity is stated as an initial warning in the operation of the referencing mechanism. That’s why in the use of the convention, an article was substituted, that somehow problematizes the topic. Instead of using the formula “Latin American photography”, in this exercise I used a variation “Photography in Latin American". As said, a path that has been assumed in favor, in pursuit of a strategic use by appropriation. But also to specialize the search in pursuit of "the Latin American quality in Photography."
Department: Arts / photography
, Complutense University of Madrid
Advisor(s): Aurora Fernández Polanco, Joaquin Perea
