Project

When we approach the eye to the screen of the electronic devise we emulate those record men who are catapulted from the track with there eyes fixed in infinity. We travel at such velocity in the so called net that the eye meets no complications, not even when a good photography is capable of retaining for a few seconds the overwhelming impulse of a locomotive.

The option of the people we are going to introduce is far removed from this anthology of urgency precisely because they are professional of gazing: the rectangle as frontier line of what happens inside and the void of the outside. Besides their love for framing, they share a pedagogy of the image capable of giving back his eyesight to a blind man. The mission of this page is to show you a part of them because by following the little stones they leave on their way, we would have followed the best course possible just before their creation speaks for them.

Photographers lead ordinary lives until their eyes penetrate within the four straight lines of the rectangle: then they display their real capacity and are able to capture the flight of time before the homicidal inertia of the clock sounds its sentence, to everyone’s amazement. Although each one of them develops his o her own talent, in each case one is confronted by a paradoxical ritual: a profound pulsation emerges that presses down the shutter, but simultaneously the artist flies away from the place submitting all of his senses to the magic of the snapping sound of the camera. Few works require such a big dose of isolation and empathy as this because only after splitting oneself in portrayers and portrayed, author of what belongs to him and what doesn’t, the photographer will eventually dissolve within his surroundings and transform the graphic material into narrative alchemy.

This is not as playful as one tends to imagine and besides it involves tremendous responsibility. The photographer is by nature, is discontented because he, she cannot remain neutral in face of facts nor pursue adoctrination: called to be the chronicler of people who have no voice, the photographer looks into things officialdom and the society of the spectacle have given their backs to and preaches in the desert, scraping unconfessed evidence from non memory, like those urban dumps converted into real lessons in humility for our vain contemporary culture.

Later on comes the process of editing, of finding meaning and associations that were invisible until the image, at last emancipated, brakes the shell. The moment has arrived to show the results of so much vigilance.

It must not be that easy to share one’s life with that little cyclop hanging from one's neck. To correct strabismus the photographer must understand that his/her destiny, as much as the destiny of his work cannot be separated from his/her own vision and that only by putting the best of him/her into his/her work, it will aspire to last. From his/her art will depend that the cracks on the wall leave their scars on the architecture, that nature turns into a symbolic stage or the human body cry out speaking to us with a gesture, a look. The photographers document what is important and instruct our ambiguous eyes, but finally it will be the consciousness of the viewer the one that dictaminates if those images awake emotions as passion, solitude or fear.

The following website is dedicated to six big names in Chilean photography Mauricio Valenzuela Hurtado, Fernando Melo Pardo, Mauricio Toro Goya, Zaida González Ríos, Fabian España Ribera y Cristóbal Olivares Araya. As an introduction there is a profile of their lives and work and in answer to our questions, they themselves speak out on the art of photography. In the documentaries we come closer to their more intimate, humane side, we enter their houses and join them in their fieldwork or we witness the miracle of editing. Last, a repertory of photographs selected personally by each of them ends this fascinating journey for the human eye. The recommendation from “Colectivo Rectángulo” is for you to look and look, with no rush because "if you are going to undertake a trip to Itaca, ask that your road be long, rich in experiences and knowledge" (K. Kavafis).