Brizuela and Roberts THE MATTER OF PHOTOGRAPHY IN THEIN AMERICAS Cantor Arts Center ISBN:ISBN: 978-1-5036-0542-8 978-1-5036-0542-8 STANFORD 90000 THE MATTER OF PHOTOGRAPHY IN THE AMERICAS Stanford University Press CANTOR ARTS 9 781503 605428 CENTER THE MATTER OF PHOTOGRAPHY IN THE AMERICAS Natalia Brizuela and Jodi Roberts With contributions by Lisa Blackmore, Amy Sara Carroll, Marianela D’Aprile, María Fernanda Domínguez, Heloisa Espada, Rachel Price, Diana Ruiz, Tatiane Santa Rosa, and Kyle Stephan Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University and Stanford University Press This publication accompanies the exhibition Designed and produced by Joan Sommers and CONTRIBUTORS The Matter of Photography in the Americas, Amanda Freymann, Glue + Paper Workshop, Lisa Blackmore is Lecturer in Art History and Inter- organized by the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center Chicago disciplinary Studies at the University of Essex, UK. for Visual Arts, Stanford University, on view from Copy edited by Thomas Fredrickson February 7 to April 30, 2018. We gratefully acknowl- Color separations by Professional Graphics, Natalia Brizuela is Associate Professor in the edge generous support of the exhibition from the Rockford, IL Department of Spanish & Portuguese and Depart- Elizabeth K. Raymond Fund for Photography, the Printed in China by Asia Pacifc Ofset ment of Film & Media, University of California, Bill and Jean Lane Fund, the Mark and Betsy Gates Berkeley. Fund for Photography, the Special Exhibitions Fund, Front cover: Priscilla Monge, Amanecer 110904115 Amy Sara Carroll is a fellow in Cornell University’s and museum members. (Dawn 110904115), 2015, pl. 128 Society for the Humanities. Back cover: Graciela Sacco, Lanzapiedras (Trebuchet) Publication of this catalogue is made possible by from the series Perpetual Fight, 2014, pl. 19 Marianela D’Aprile is an architectural worker, the Mariposa Fund and the CAC Exhibitions, Loans, DETAILS writer, and educator based in Chicago. and Publications Fund. Page 1: Joiri Minaya, #dominicanwomengooglesearch, María Fernanda Domínguez is an independent 2016, pl. 109 scholar and curator. © 2018 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Page 2: (Left to right, top to bottom) Graciela Sacco, Junior University. All rights reserved. Untitled, 2000–01, pl. 18; Adriana Bustos, Miguel Heloisa Espada is Curator of Modern and Contem- con sombra en un cerrito (Miguel with shadow porary Art at the Instituto Moreira Salles, Brazil. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized over a hill), 2006, pl. 27; Eugenio Dittborn, Nueve Rachel Price is Associate Professor in the Depart- in any form or by any means, electronic or mechan- sobrevivientes (plumas) (Nine survivors [feathers]) ment of Spanish and Portuguese at Princeton ical, including photocopying and recording, or in Airmail Painting no. 51, 1986–2007, pl. 31; Hudinilson University. any information storage or retrieval system without Jr., Untitled, c. 1980, pl. 49; Alberto Greco, Acto the prior written permission of the Iris & B. Gerald Vivo Dito (Madrid) (Act of pointing [Madrid]), 1963, Jodi Roberts is the Robert M. and Ruth L. Halperin Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University. pl. 62; Marcos López, Tomando sol en la terraza Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Cantor (Sunbathing on the terrace), 2002, pl. 83; Bernardo Arts Center, Stanford University. First published in 2018 Ortiz, Untitled, 2015, pl. 105; Oscar Muñoz, Video Diana Ruiz is a PhD student in the Department by Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for the still from Línea del destino (Destination line), 2006, of Film & Media at University of California, Berkeley. Visual Arts, Stanford University pl. 117; Bruno Dubner, Untitled, 2008. pl. 126 Stanford, CA Page 232: Waldemar Cordeiro, A mulher que não Tatiane Santa Rosa is a PhD student in Visual museum.stanford.edu é B.B. (The woman who is not B.B.), 1971, printed Studies at the University of California, Santa 1973, pl. 99 Cruz, and adjunct faculty at the San Francisco Art and Institute. Stanford University Press Kyle Stephan is a PhD candidate in the Department Stanford, CA of Art & Art History at Stanford University. sup.org Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available at the Library of Congress. ISBN: 978-1-5036-0542-8 CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 6 Introduction Natalia Brizuela and Jodi Roberts 9 What’s the Matter with Photography? Natalia Brizuela 14 NEWS Jodi Roberts 40 B e a t r i z González:SurfaceMatters María Fernanda Domínguez 50 ETHNOGRAPHY Jodi Roberts 62 SylvanThinking:RedrawingtheAmazon Kyle Stephan 78 DISCIPLINE Jodi Roberts 84 Original Copies and Obscure Traces: Ángela Bonadies’s Metaphotographic Inquiries Lisa Blackmore 92 IMPRINTS Jodi Roberts 102 Tracing Disfiguration: Teresa Margolles’s Papeles Diana Ruiz 116 PERFORMANCE Jodi Roberts 120 As Darkroom Is to Light Box, Lourdes Grobet’s Hora y media Is to Ingrid Hernández’s La maquila golondrina Amy Sara Carroll 128 COPIES Jodi Roberts 138 SobrasofGeraldodeBarros:AProjectinProcess Heloisa Espada 154 DATA Jodi Roberts 160 W a l d e m a r Cordeiroandthe“AlgorithmicInfrastructureofanImage” Rachel Price 164 JoiriMinaya:OfUndoingImages Tatiane Santa Rosa 176 ERASURE Jodi Roberts 182 Remembering through the Body: Rosângela Rennó’s Imemorial Marianela D’Aprile 188 SELECTEDBIBLIOGRAPHY 220 MATTER Jodi Roberts 202 PHOTOGRAPHYCREDITS 229 Writing—orCoding—Light:LeoVillareal’sProtophotography LENDERS 231 Natalia Brizuela 210 WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH PHOTOGRAPHY? Natalia Brizuela For Gonzalez-Torres, Horn’s sheet of gold raised hope as THE MATTER OF PHOTOGRAPHY TODAY it transformed the very matter and measure of wealth—gold— The square shows nothing; there is no fgure in it; it represents into the glowing light of dreams. The depressing state of a nothing, despite it being—according to its title and what can be world increasingly hemmed in by the rise of neoliberal policies recognized from its iconic shape—a type of photograph. Nothing and structures from the 1970s onward achieved, in Gonzalez- is represented, that is, beyond the gold. Along the bottom of the Torres’s eyes, a moment of redemption in Horn’s artwork, lying square is printed the word POLAROID and a series of numbers: on the gallery foor. It marked a stark contrast to the way life 1103904104. Similar numbers identify every Polaroid image in was increasingly monetized in the 1970s and 1980s, as markets the world, branding each as authentic and unique. became the only recognized measure of human and social value. This golden image (fg. 1) was made in 2015 by Costa Rican If the trading of goods, which thereby established abstract forms artist Priscilla Monge and belongs to a series in which she of value, had complete control over life, then art needed to take gilded large digital prints of Polaroids. The images in the series the element most precious to the market, the standard essential are titled either Amanecer or Atardecer (Sunrise or Sunset) and to its functioning—gold—and turn it into sheer beauty, empty- always include the Polaroid serial number (see also pl. 128). ing it of any preestablished meaning. Gold Field was displayed What objects or worlds the original Polaroid captured, if it at LAMOCA unadorned, unmediated, as “the simple physical captured anything at all, are invisible in Monge’s works. Beneath reality” of gold itself.3 For Gonzalez-Torres, the shiny, refec- every sheet of gold lies a hidden image. The works in the series tive, golden square—with nothing more to it than its material do not show a world but rather refect whatever world is placed existence, not taking on or ofering any stable shape—alluded before it. They are, in essence, golden, sacred mirrors. to the world of commodity exchange. By extension, then, it also Monge’s use of gold leaf is a tribute to Cuban-born artist referred to the neoliberalization of life the Cuban artist so elo- Felix Gonzalez-Torres, who saw Gold Field (1982; fg. 2) by Roni quently and indirectly described when reacting to Horn’s piece. Horn at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, in Art was placed quite literally at ground level, on the same plane 1990. The work moved him, he said, toward “a new landscape, a and position as the lives trampled on and discarded by declining possible horizon, a place of rest and absolute beauty . a place welfare states and rising market economies. Gold Field suggested to dream, to regain energy, to dare.”1 Horn’s large, thin, rectan- the need for another form of value and another form of art—one gular sheet of one kilo of pure gold, placed directly on the foor, that retained the auratic capacity of art in the midst of the trafc, was created during a decade that Gonzalez-Torres described consumption, and commodifcation of everything. As life under as one of “trickle-down economics . growing racial and class neoliberalism became more precarious, art could “redeem” tension . defunding vital social programs . abandonment (as Gonzalez-Torres argued) and critique (as I argue); it could of ideals . explosion of the information industry, and at the counter the rise of social and economic precarity by ofering, same time the implosion of meaning . the fabulous decade among other strategic propositions, ephemeral “little things,” to was depressing. Especially in the face of public inaction, and the borrow Gonzalez-Torres’s term. absence of an organized reaction to so many devastating sta- Monge’s Amanecer and Atardecer series enact a similar tistics.”2 The 1980s were also the decade of the AIDS crisis. This critique. She takes a Polaroid—a unique, authentic, degradable dire epidemic, marking New York City and San Francisco most physical object of little intrinsic value—and turns it into a digital visibly, stemmed from a global structure whose shape traced the image—infnitely reproducible, durable, immaterial, of indef- development of colonial networks and the structural or systemic nite value—and then covers it with gold.