Furious or minimalist, the gesture of abstract photography at the Larivière Foundation

The possibility that photography maintains in relation to what is captured as something existing—a clear node within what the device proposes—is conditioned by focus. This has been happening for decades in a key aspect. From the photographic cropping produced by focusing, segments of any captured reality are obtained that function as a work in itself, reflecting what the author's eye can see in what it looks at.

But the exhibition Photographic Abstractions , which can be visited at the Larivière Foundation , curated by Alexis Fabry and with a very suggestive exhibition design by Juan Lo Bianco , shows the other node that involves the term "abstract" in relation to photography. It has to do with experimentation in the process that appeals both to the photosensitive emulsion – capable of being modified by different chemical factors – as well as photos that are "copied" directly when they are interposed between light and a plate with sensitivity to light exposure.

The reasons for this reduction within a collection of more than 400 photographers have to do with the use of the noun that carries the title, something that is very clear in the curator's words. "The exhibition oscillates freely, depending on Jean-Louis Larivière 's inclinations, between two of his inspirations: on the one hand, informalism and abstract expressionism and, on the other, the geometries of cold America," says Fabry, a friend of the collector and founder of the space in La Boca, with whom he shares a passion for photography.

Jean-Louis doesn’t feel that abstract photography occupies a significant place in the overall corpus, but “it’s certainly present and has been from the very beginning of the collection,” he says of the foundation’s first show in 2022. “I saw an opportunity to show photographic materials that were very different from and complementary to those on display in the densely populated Dreams of Spider Woman . They were radical materials, spurred by experimentation, as were many of the works in the inaugural exhibition.”

Thus, in Photographic Abstractions, a line of study within the collection of Latin American authors, it is possible to find León Ferrari or Julio Le Parc who usually relied on other devices for their productions, as well as very interesting variations on the works of Sameer Makarius and the Colombian Jorge Ortiz , very close to pictorial abstraction, based on experimentation and where the camera ceases to have importance to focus on the photographic process and the freedom that the laboratory implies.

Among those who produce clippings with this approach, the Argentine artists Andrea Ostera , Jorge Roiger , and Facundo de Zuviría stand out, highlighting the geometric substance or formal harmony of an architecture that seems drawn. Juan Travnik and Colombian Santiago Rebolledo stand out for capturing remains, the traces left on walls where something happened that barely becomes a subtle presence.

Víctor Robledo and Geraldo de Barrios , the first Colombian and the second Brazilian, use the window as an intermediary between two visions that range from what the light reflects in the angle of a hanging glass work to what that pseudo screen cuts out, revealing something simple and at the same time curious, with wires that function almost like black lines.

Chilean Cristián Silva-Avária cuts until he achieves a pictorial abstraction à la Mark Rotko, and Colombian Fernell Franco, who had an interesting solo exhibition last year , makes the hint of what was captured almost disappear due to the type of haphazard processing of the copy subjected to the inclemency of the rain.

Another point in Fabry's text relates to a certain origin of the photographer's approach to documenting, stating that "the walls of America, eaten away by saltpeter, bruised by impact, or vibrant with vivid colors, have been an inexhaustible subject for many photographers. But a growing number of artists have opted to abandon the photographic record and replace it with a direct confrontation with photosensitive paper, both inside and outside the darkroom. The gesture betrays rage , is sometimes expressive, but since the 2000s, it has more often than not been meticulously minimalist."

To better understand the scope of this collection, in conversation with Jean-Louis Larivière we touched on the concept of "Latin American photography" and how long it has been used.

"The notion of Latin American photography was consolidated, in my opinion, since the late 1970s, following the first Latin American Photography Colloquium called Hecho en Latinoamérica (Made in Latin America). This meeting was key! Researchers, curators, and, above all, photographers from all over Latin America were invited to it. The event was pioneering, both because it established the concept of Latin American photography and because of an expanded definition of the concept of photography itself, particularly championed by certain Mexican artists. We are in Mexico in the late 1970s, and the experiments of avant-garde groups like Suma or Peyote y la Compañía, to name just a few, who played with the notion of photography, appropriating anonymous photos and exploring alternative media like photocopying, are present in the Colloquium."

Considering that "many photographers on the continent are self-taught, the canon weighs less heavily on them, and they are particularly open to experimentation, to a kind of formal radicalism. Two years later, in 1981, the always pioneering colloquium convened an exhibition dedicated to photography books by Latin American authors that celebrated the definitive importance of the book, the photobook in particular." It's interesting to know this fact to understand the passion for collecting and publishing photographers from our continent, but also this other aspect that emerges from the conversation with Larivière.

"If there is a distinctive feature of Latin American photography, I would locate it in the porosity between high culture and popular culture . In addition to the context of violence in which the photographer moves and which impacts his work. This porosity was neuralgic in the inaugural exhibition of the foundation. Like Manuel Puig in his work, the intention of the collective exhibition was to combine, cross and intermingle voices and registers that broke down boundaries between the popular and the cultured, or between the emphatic distinction between a mass culture that works with kitsch, the cheesiness of sentimental soap operas or B-movies, and the canon and glamour of traditional classicism."

It's fascinating to find some of the keys that define us and that come from what art represents in its most ancient function , which has to do with anthropology. While we see unique works, the underlying aspects of these productions considerably expand our recognition within a culture.

Participating artists: Romulo Aguerre | Geraldo de Barros | Lazaro Blanco | Johanna Calle | David Consuegra | Martin Chambi | Leon Ferrari | Fernell Franco | Billy Hare | Jorge Heredia | Beatriz Jaramillo | Agustin Jimenez | Julio Le Parc | Pablo Lopez Luz | Sameer Makarius | Raul Martinez | Jorge Ortiz | Andrea Ostera | Santiago Rebolledo | Victor Robledo | Jorge Roiger | Armando Salas Portugal | Cristian Silva-Avaria | Juan Travnik | Victor Trejo | Jose Yalenti | Facundo de Zuvira