Text by Josefina Licitra, Photos y Pepe Mateos
Translated by Ted O’Callahan

Avellaneda. The professional life of Pepe Mateos has a turning point. Argentine photojournalism does too. The remarkable thing is that these moments occurred in the same place and on the same black day. On June 26, 2002, during one of many street protests amid a widespread crisis, the government of President Eduardo Duhalde decided to prevent at any cost demonstrators from blocking a bridge in Avellaneda, at the southern end of greater Buenos Aires. This decision led to fierce repression that ended with two protestors, Dario Santillán and Maximiliano Kosteki, murdered in cold blood by the Federal Police. And the death of Santillán had the horrible distinction of being captured by Pepe Mateos’ camera.

These livid, chaotic, burning photographs would later be key in establishing accountability over what came to be called “The Slaughter of Avellaneda.” Thanks to the documentation provided by the 240 photos used in the case the police chief ended up imprisoned, the government of President Eduardo Duhalde was forced to call early elections, and Argentine photojournalism was reborn in terrible splendor. And it established as never before a sort of manifesto about the real character of the photographic image.

Sitting in a bar in San Telmo just meters from his house Pepe Mateos, who is 50 years old and has spent 22 years as a photojournalist, including 18 with the newspaper Clarín, recalls the episode with austere distance: he doesn’t gesture; he does not alter the tone of his voice; he is economical in everything he says, showing perfect humility throughout.

- That day I felt tremendous responsibility. And what happened afterward overwhelmed everything I thought I knew about photojournalism.

- Do you think that photography in Argentina ever had, before the episode in Avellaneda, such a documentary burden?

- That it seems a little presumptuous … It is true that the pictures had incredible value as proof of what happened. But that didn’t have anything to do with me. ClarĂ­n sent me. And I was there. Sometimes it comes down to being in the moment.

- How did that affect you: being in the moment?

- In a strange way. It’s a bit inevitable to feel some vanity, pride, even a sort of transcendental delirium, thinking, “why was I the one who was there” … I know the feeling very well. Studying film there was a time I went to the movies every day. When I came out, everything looked different. I felt great, immense, as if I’d been expanded. But the truth is I can’t give any real explication of what happened to me.

- Have your photos kept you up at night?

- Sure. I’ve thought hard about pictures that I’ve taken.

- Were you questioning yourself?

- A little, yes. There was a close-up of Kosteki I did not take and that haunted me quite a while. I couldn’t take it. I felt that what was happening exceeded what can be photographed. I took photographs, but at the same time I was very shocked by the situation.

- The camera didn’t create enough distance?

- No, there was no distance. I was there.

Assassination of Dario Santillan, June 26, 2002, © Pepe Mateos

Lujan. The first time that Pepe worked as a photographer he was 28. It was in the province of Neuquén, in western Argentina (where he had moved temporarily for personal reasons). He spent several years at a local newspaper, until 1992 when he returned to Buenos Aires and started working for Clarín, where he has covered fashion, news, events, in short: everything.

But before that there was another completely different life.

Pepe grew up in Lujan, in Buenos Aires province, in a family of carpenters (father, grandfather, and uncles all work in the trade). The only thing that existed was what could be built or broken by hand. The culture of physical effort was also a moral code. Pepe has been working since he was young. Starting when he was 10, he had jobs during the summer. He used the money he earned to buy his first camera. It was plastic. With it he began taking occasional pictures: a bridge, his brother.

Years passed and Pepe worked in libraries and carpet stores. He painted walls and did lathing. He worked in a factory. At one point, in his twenties, he asked his mother about an envelope of photos.

- I asked her where the envelope was. She told me, “Oh, I threw it away because they were pictures of nothing.” It was a fabulous phrase. I’ll never forget it. That made me ask, how do I convince my parents that I take pictures of “something”? My start in photography was a struggle. A blind struggle. I remember when I began developing, it was terrible. The first time I bought chemicals, I was sold expired stuff. When I developed the film and nothing appeared, I thought “what the hell is this?” I was 18 and in Lujan. There was no one to ask because the only person in town who knew anything was the photographer who sold me the expired chemicals. In my house you used things until they were gone so when I finally used up the useless chemicals I bought some more and there were the images: it was wonderful. The photos came out. I developed all the time and in doing that made every mistake possible, including once pouring the chemicals on my bed. My mother almost killed me. Later, when I started working for the newspaper in NeuquĂ©n, she said: “Who would have thought that with all the disasters you had, you would end up with work.”

- How did you end up becoming a photographer with such demoralizing experiences?

- When I work, I ask the inevitable question, “so what?” Beyond immediate personal gratification, what ultimate meaning does the work have? I know there is a great deal of negativity around that thought, something almost nihilistic, to think “what I do is of no use whatever.” But, working for a newspaper gives me existential justification, both economically and socially. What I do is take pictures for the paper.

- This justification reassures you. But are you satisfied?

- Yes, because for me there is no split between the work that I do for economic reasons and the work where I might have some other motive. When I’m working, I’m not aware that I’m working for money. Whether I like or dislike an assignment comes from the exchange between the two parties that made up the photo. The act of photographing something must create change; there must be contact between the photographer and the one being photographed that inevitably results in some kind of loss. And I don’t just mean with people. You can be photographing apparently inanimate objects and even there something may be happening.

Buenos Aires. The pictures presented in Nuestra Mirada are the result of a sensual interaction between Pepe Mateos and Buenos Aires. The work, made up of a series of moments captured over the last decade, functions like a cinematic story: each image looks like a frame rescued at random, there is no beginning and no end, but they offer pieces of the puzzle of a volcanic city. Two elderly women expecting the worst, a herd of soldiers and the terrifying power of the state, among many others, are part of a history marked by fissure: in every picture there is something breaking, a mask falling away.

Pepe Mateos was able to see, in the chaos of the city, an order and truth.

- But with these photos there was no pretension. I may get carried away by what I see, but that does not mean it “says” something. For example, I was working mostly at night and I was drawn to places where I saw people and interesting situations. Then I started to work on that. But when I became aware that I was trying for something specific, well it all went to shit.

- The way a dream disappears when you realize you are dreaming.

- It’s exactly the same. Every time I think “I want this,” it’s ruined. That’s why I admire people like Marcos Lopez, who chooses a direction and goes there. Though, with Marcos, if you put him on the street, he is very good there too. He isn’t doing stale repetitive work. Marcos is a master of light, a guy with a vision, one of the country’s most intelligent photographers.

- Someone who is clearly going in a direction.

- Sure. I, on the other hand, feel my way along. I find things. I don’t want to underestimate the value in that. There is always intention; the difficult part is to make it conscious. I feel that’s where I fall down. The photos I selected for Nuestra Mirada … show people a glimpse, but there is no unified work here, no body … that’s what I feel. At the same time, I think there is a very self-destructive mechanism in what I say about my own work. I try to use that to keep pushing myself. Rather than stop taking pictures, I keep taking them and bumping into my limits.

- Did you think about stopping photography?

- Yes, around 2002. It came out of a couple years of not knowing what to do. I photographed fashion and, let’s say, it wasn’t bad, but I’m not a star photographer. Doing news coverage wasn’t wonderful. And interviews weren’t any better. It was like I did everything ok, but I didn’t have one thing to point to and say, “Wow, that’s what I‘m great at.” And around then all the questions and doubts reached a critical mass. I wasn’t excited about anything. But I’d never lost the desire to take photos. So in 2002 I said, “I’ll go out on the streets and see what happens.”

So Pepe did go out into the streets, and “what happened” was a great deal: The Slaughter of Avellaneda, Maximilian Kosteki, Dario Santillán, photos carrying the furious weight of the political history of a country and the truth that the work of Pepe Mateos, like pieces of woodwork, has weight, volume, and body. And it lasts.

Pepe Mateos in Bar Britånico, San Telmo, © Pablo Corral Vega

Tags: Buenos Aires city, photojournalism

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 15th, 2009 at 03:41 and is filed under Galleries. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.