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Interview with Eduardo Gil by Pablo Corral Vega
Translated from the Spanish by Jeanette Warner
San Telmo, a traditional Buenos Aires neighborhood, is home to the famous Argentine photographer Eduardo Gil. To reach his studio on the third floor you take one of those old elevators that these days can only be found in Buenos Aires. Inside there is a series of rooms converted into classrooms and offices. There are large photos on the walls and dozens of piled up frames just back from an exhibition.
During the time I spent in Buenos Aires getting to know different photographers, I heard the name “Eduardo Gil” again and again. He was spoken of not only as a great photographer, but also for his influence as a prominent teacher, curator, and driving force in the world of photography; the majority of the most recent generation of Argentine photographers has studied under him.
Eduardo is a slight man who talks with the mathematical precision of a philosopher.
When did your relationship with photography start?
I came into the world of photography by accident. When the military coup occurred in 1976, I was a trade union representative in a multinational and was immediately put on the government’s blacklist. If I wanted to stay alive I had to quit my job. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, and a photographer friend who shot weddings and birthday parties gave me a few jobs. I didn’t like it much until I started to do what I have been doing professionally ever since, photojournalism. At the beginning it was a way to pay the bills. Later I realized that photography could be something more than just a way to earn a living.
Eduardo Gil, © Pablo Corral Vega
What are you referring to? What did you discover?
All of my photography from that era was a form of protest. I thought that with my images I could start a revolution. I quickly realized it was not possible with photography alone. I began to see that, at best, I could cause small, internal revolutions, and only in my own daily life. During that time creating art was the farthest thing from my mind. The world was all about politics, activism, and airplanes, which were a huge part of my life for a long time. Little by little, a love was born for the image. At first my photographs were very much in the style of Henri Cartier-Bresson: black and white, shot with a Leica. As I continued to study, I began to feel a need to change, and my photography evolved into what it is today, which, on the surface, isn’t at all like what I made during the early 80s.
What do you think of documentary photography?
We shouldn’t get documentary photography mixed up with photojournalism. Photojournalism, by definition, is photography with a caption. Obviously the context, the printed page, other images that accompany the photo, and just being classified as photojournalism can label the photo, put it into a category. That is to say, a photo in a newspaper is not a photograph that is open to interpretation: it is a picture that should inform the viewer of an event which occurred in a particular place and under specific circumstances.
With respect to documentary photography, you must remember that it is based on the unspoken agreement between the photographer and the viewer that the photograph portrays what really happened. We can synthesize, saying that two options exist: that no photograph can ever be completely real, in terms of truthfulness, objectivity, and neutrality, or, on the contrary, that every photo does demonstrate a reality, as Paul Strand understood it, realizing that an object or subject must be in front of the camera in order for the photograph to exist.
This is related to Roland Barthes’ concept about the nature of photography, the “this was.” This thesis places all of photography in the same category: a passport photo is the same as a picture of a wedding cake, a staged photograph, and an artistic photo — all of them show something that “was,” something that existed in front of a camera. But we must immediately clarify that Barthes said “this was,” and not “this was true,” which is another theme concerning the manipulation of images and the contemporary crisis in respect to the traditional uses of photography, largely due to the loss of faith in the truthfulness of the photographic image.
You told me that you don’t want to give me any details about the pictures of (argentina), the essay we are publishing in Nuestra Mirada. We know only that the pictures were taken in Buenos Aires.
(argentina) may be interpreted in one way by an Argentine citizen who is familiar with our history and understands the horror of a military dictatorship, or who lived here after the military regime, during the era of President Menem. But I have also seen people from other places recognize things in the photos that are particular to the history of their own country and their own reality. In other words, there are certain themes that apply universally, above and beyond personal experience.
If I were to just give the information about what was happening when the photos were made, it would turn the pictures into literal translations. I would be weighing them down with information about a single moment and giving them a specific meaning. I would like the viewer to develop his or her own relationship with the work: to contemplate the images, to look for their own meanings and metaphors. In turn, this gives the work many possible meanings.
The photographs, taken where I live in Buenos Aries between 1985 and 2000, are intended to be a metaphor of Argentina from the post-dictatorship era to the present.
© Eduardo Gil
© Eduardo Gil
Now that you are working on much more conceptual projects, you have removed yourself from documentary photography. Can you tell us a little bit about that process?
The work I am creating is direct, practically without manipulation, except for slight color and contrast correction. It’s in color, medium format, and the prints measure 1 meter by 1.2 meters or more. The images don’t have the critical undertone that, by default, is usually associated with documentary photography. However, I believe that my work today should be classified as documentary now more than ever.
Initially I favored wide-angle lenses, looking for frames that would have a strong visual impact, trying to influence the emotion of the viewer with expressive effects — lots of contrast, grain, etc. What I do today is exactly the opposite, a shift that has come about over several years.
After (argentina) there was a period of time where I stopped shooting in black and white. I started to use more color, producing triptychs and multi-panels, pieces that close in on themselves, with cryptic tones and full of symbolism. This was an in-between period during which some of my early obsessions were still very much alive.
Later on I felt the need to use larger formats and to make much bigger prints. As if I were critiquing my own work, my own paradigms, I set out on a search that took me in various directions. I was shooting landscapes and paradoxes, where I basically tried to distance myself from everything anecdotal, symbolic, and expressionistic.
I’m interested in connecting the viewer to the creative process. I want them to feel the drive I first felt that moved me to create the image. I force myself to hold back, to make simpler photographs. I try to distance myself from the craft of photography and from my technical skills. I’m interested in the power of the creative drive.
© Eduardo Gil
Can a photographer move between the worlds of art and documentary photography?
In my opinion they are not opposite terms. If we talk about professional photography, or, more to the point, photojournalism, my brain makes a clear division. When I am working on a job I bear in mind that I am being paid for an assignment that an editor needs. Normally I thoroughly enjoy this work, but it has to do with needs different from those I put into play in my personal work.
We have to work under requirements that sometimes coincide with our personal esthetic and ideological likes and sometimes do not. Whatever the case, we are dealing with other people’s needs that we have to satisfy. I have a straightforward approach: when I am working, I work. I am in a fiercely competitive, high-level market where I need to push myself in order to achieve what is demanded of me. I try to be as creative and effective as I can, but that’s as far as it goes. In the end, it’s good work and it pays. Period.
When I work on my personal photographs I am my own boss. I am the one who sets the limits and goals, I work towards my own ideas, obsessions, and esthetic. Photojournalism is not personal work for me; it doesn’t have anything to do with my esthetic needs.
The paradigms are changing radically with the coming of age of digital photography, and now there are millions of people taking photos.
What is happening now is very similar to what happened at the end of the 19th century when the first Kodak camera came onto the market at a ridiculously low price. It unleashed a league of “savages” who overtook photography without having the faintest notion of art history, rules of composition, or what was esthetically good or bad. Now these “savages” are considered a huge part of what defined the photographic esthetic of the 20th century. I always say that the rules of composition died in 1888 with the mass production of the Kodak. Instead of presuming these changes make photography commonplace and trivial, I think there is a way to look positively on the explosion of digital photography. At the very least, those of us who choose to work with images must accept it as something we have to live with.
What do you say to your students about freedom and the need to find a voice of their own?
I tell them they must listen to their own personal needs; to study, to work hard in order to discover what is meaningful to themselves; and above all, to be honest. We can’t settle for what we already have. We can’t keep churning out what Philippe Dubois calls “redundant esthetics.” Every day we have to ask ourselves if we can push ourselves to the next level, if we can turn it up a notch. I think that’s the key. We should give ourselves the right to freely change how and what we think.
Tags: art, Buenos Aires city, interview