Constructing Ruins by Santiago Porter (January 24, 2010) 
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Categories / Architecture / Cityscapes / Documentary Conceptual / / Click here to open comments section, click again when done to close / 2 Comments
Curator Statement – Marcelo Brodsky on Santiago Porter
The political tradition of Argentina in the twentieth century has been marked by the central figure of Juan Domingo Peron and his wife Evita. They created the specific mysteries of our policy making: everybody is a peronist no matter what he thinks or wants to do, if he wants to reach real power. Images of Peron and Eva are referential of our trade union culture. The institutional buildings built by the Peron government in the late forties and early fities stand witness to a golden era of national pride and of emerging middle classes. But life went on, and the decay of the reference and of its buildings is now tinting our present with history. Argentina is no longer a country of collective dreams and social changes, but a space in which only individual projects get achieved. Santiago Porter places his thoughts on this process, illuminating our complex relationship with the image we have of ourselves with his pictures of the remains of the Peronist culture.
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Our poll "A photo essay always needs a great written story" closed. 267 people voted, 28% agrees, 72% disagrees. 233 people answered our follow-up question "Are you a photographer?" 82% indicated they are, 18% said no. Initially, negative answers to question #1 were almost 100% as was the pecentage of photographers among respondants. Then, when the level of non-photographers started to rise, the percentage of people indicating good text is always essential started to rise too. This seems to indicate that non-photographers think that adding good text to your photo essays is essential. In my opinion: if you want non-photographers to dig your work, you know what to do...
After the absurdity and the violence, what is left behind? How many of the different aberrations in Argentina’s recent political history can be interpreted in the cracks of the architecture surviving the protagonists?
With these concerns as a premise, and rooted in my in my interest for the representation of absence, space and histories, I decided to work with the appearance of certain buildings and monuments. This decision has several possible explanations: from the use as metaphor and the intention to make certain commentaries on history to something approaching almost taxonomical ends.
Working on these photographs, I treated them like portraits, as a means to make evident the distinct layers of accumulated history, assuming that these cracks tell us stories in the same way that the wrinkles on person’s face tell of their life.
Santiago Porter (1971) lives and works in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
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