Santiago Porter

Santiago Porter follow Argentinean, born 1971

Lives in Buenos Aires, Argentina

Projects/Portfolios

Mist - Part I (2007)

Introduction

Mist - Part II (2008/2011)

Introduction

In the second stage of this project I have dedicated myself to photograph locations, monuments and unfinished structures of particular public works. This second stage is my response to an idea that many monuments created with the aim of commemorating specific events ultimately end up obsolete. I have chosen to photograph particular places and objects, motivated by the anecdotes hidden behind them and fundamentally for the capacity that I find in these object to evoke those anecdotes: observation towers, walls used by firing squads, decapitated sculptures, bridges that lead nowhere, amongst others.

To cite a particular example: in the photograph Evita, we see the decapitated sculpture of Eva Perón. On her left, barely entering the frame, is another figure representing President Juan Perón, headless and handless. After the death of Evita in 1952, President Perón commissioned the sculptor Leonne Tomassi to produce this pair of statues for the frontispiece of what was to be the mausoleum where the embalmed remains of his wife Eva Duarte would rest. During the military coup of 1955 that overthrew and exiled Perón, military commanders obsessed with the idea of eradicating all images of Evita stormed the sculptor’s studio just as he was working on the finishing touches to the statues and proceeded to decapitate the figures with hammer blows. The sculptures, made of tons of solid marble, were immediately seized and thrown to the bottom of Buenos Aires’ heavily contaminated Riachuelo river. The sculptures were recovered forty years later during the Peronist government of Carlos Menem and located in the 17 de Octubre country park in San Vicente, 50 kilometres from Buenos Aires, the place where Perón and Evita used to pass their weekends and today also the resting place for Perón’s remains.

How much of this story of antinomies and violence is recognizable in this image of decapitated sculptures in a misty wood? It is here that I sustain my commitment to photography as the best tool for representing the ideas that I am working with.