La Jetée (1962) is a fundamental work within the filmography of Chris Marker. A 28-minute short defined by the author himself, a member of the so-called Rive Gauche group, as a fotonovela. It is narrated through still photographs, except for a single moment, in which the protagonist, who is with her eyes closed, opens them during a fleeting moving sequence to then continue the narration through static images. That brief moment of transition turned out to be a lesson for another great creator, Paolo Gasparini, (Gorizia, Italy, 1934). “At that precise moment a world opened up for me: that of the photobook,” says the photographer, through a videoconference from his home in Venezuela, where he has lived since 1955.
Actually, the first and essential lesson that the artist received about the photobook took place years before; when he met Paul Strand, his undisputed teacher. a countryone of the most emblematic publications of the American author (whose texts were written by Cesare Zavatinni, promoter of Italian neorealism) would serve as a reference when structuring Bobare (1959), the first book of the abundant production of publications developed by Gasparini. It was, perhaps, the first impression accompanied by photographs with a tone of denunciation made in Venezuela, as it made visible the miserable conditions of a rural community.
When Gasparini initially showed Strand the accumulated material to shape Bobare, the latter was not convinced. “He suggested accompanying me on a 15-day trip, from Maracaibo to the Paraguaná peninsula,” recalls the author. “During the journey, he talked to me a lot about the photobook genre. I understood that it was a account, a story. I also understood the possibilities that photography acquired through this format; the possibilities of the photographic sequence. When two photographs are joined, links are created that generate a new meaning, a third image. The true photobook is the one that narrates through images. It is not a mere set of photographs. Photography is ideology and only through the set of these ideas is the work that articulates the photobook born. In that sense, most of the publications that are made today are not photobooks. Its rise is unbearable. As a whole, a great futility emerges. A great repeat. It is an inconsistent phenomenon, a product of the publishing industry; a fashion. Among last year’s publications I would only highlight American Geography by Matt Black. It reflects the spirit of the time. We live surrounded by great problems and, in general, photobooks do not reflect them. Many are just a pretext to express something personal.”
In this way, the photobook has been an essential narrative mechanism within the itinerary marked out by the author. A route of six decades that runs Field of Images, the exhibition dedicated to him by the Mapfre Foundation in Madrid. In the exhibition, the photographer, whom the curator María Wills defines as the most South American of Europeans, has captured the contradictions of Latin America through the fabric of its cities, in resonance with other European capitals.
To see you better, Latin America (1972), was the third photobook published by Gasparini. A classic within the genre, whose effort was aimed at “killing the wolf before he forces us to consume ourselves by consuming.” Thus, through short and concise questions, printed in large size, the reader is guided through an urban and social landscape understood as “a vast battlefield”, ideologically divided between socialism and capitalism. Edmundo Desnoes would be in charge of the texts, and Umberto Peña of the design. The photographer was so satisfied with that work that he adopted “the photobook theory as an inevitable symbiosis between the photographer, the writer and the designer. Over time I realized that this was not the case, that a photobook may or may not have text, although I think it helps a lot in understanding and says things that sometimes images alone cannot”, adds the author.
In backworld (1986) Gasparini invites us to reflect on two apparently conflicting worlds: the first and the third world, through images formed by several planes or layers, between which the reader makes his way in search of details. Images of great depth where everything remains in focus. The publication received several awards, including the Gold Medal for the most beautiful books in the world, in Leipzig, in 1987. “I worked with a great designer, Álvaro Sotillo, who structured the book using a type of paper for the first world and a different one for the third”, recalls the photographer. “That’s when I realized that awards usually go to design, not content. A great contradiction. The principle of the Bauhaus, which said that form follows function, has been turned around. Today a book is good if it is well designed. The content doesn’t matter. Many times the discourse of the images is subordinated to the design, and this does not help the reading of the publication, when a book is made to be read in the best way”.
“The use made of images is very important. We are seeing it now in the Ukraine war,” the author continues. “In 1997, some paramilitaries carried out a massacre in Chiapas in which women and children died. I went to mass in homage to the dead. Pulling out the camera, a woman caught my eye. ‘Know that here we live with the dead. Make good use of photography’, she told me. That was my third lesson. It is important that the photographer has certain criteria to curb certain uses of photography. Photography is where words are not, and it always represents whoever takes it”, he emphasizes, while he acknowledges that revolutions almost always end up disappointing him. “The work of a photographer has to do with what he has lived, thought and also changed over the years.”
“There are two trends in photography: on the one hand, the one that seeks to embellish things, and makes use of a constructed photograph. The one that can make beautiful what is not. On the other hand, there is photography that seeks the truth. In this sense, I would like to quote and thank Antonio Muñoz Molina, author of one of the texts that is included in the exhibition catalog entitled A beauty brand in the world. I would change, or rather extend, the title to say that photography is leaving a trace of truth. And photobooks, in general, don’t do it anymore.”
‘Paolo Gasparini. Field of Images‘. Madrid Mapfre Foundation. Up to 28 images.
‘Paolo Gasparini. Field of Images‘. RM. 344 pages. 55 euros.
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