The photographs on this page were exhibited in the Centro Municipal de Exposiciones, Subte, Montevideo, Uruguay, from the 8th of July to the 8th of August, 2004. They were selected from a series of photographs taken at Pocitos Beach, Montevideo.
In his book, ‘Towards a Philosophy of Photography’, Vilém Flusser states, “The question put to photographers by critics of photography can be formulated as: ‘How far have photographers succeeded in subordinating the camera’s programme to their own intentions ……?’.
In a world where reality, in terms of what is real, or actually out there, is becoming more and more removed from that reality, (in the sense of Baudrillard’s ‘hyper-reality’, where the world, including its photographic images, is without a real origin), I have taken pains in previous exhibitions to record the state of things as they are, or appear to be. I have tried to avoid all traces of ‘effect’ produced by the camera, and strived to transfer the image of ‘what is actually there’ onto the surface of the photo with, using another quote from Flusser, “as little evidence as possible to show that it is a ‘technical image’, produced by an apparatus”.
However, reality, or realities, are difficult, if not impossible to capture on film in the sense that certain factors place themselves between the reality being photographed, or the ‘input’, and the recorded reality, or the ‘output’. For example, the apparatus (camera) and the operator (photographer) both leave their ‘mark’ or ‘impression’ on the photo, depending on the composition, the type of lens, the exposure, light, angle, etc.
Other factors involved, include ‘techniques’, such as long exposures, when taking photos of rivers, or traffic at night, and also the use of fish-eye lenses, etc., to produce images which have nothing to with reality and everything to do with effect. The photographs of Testoni are a example of ‘effect’, and are the antithesis of what I was trying to achieve.
The idea of my current project started in Rocha, Uruguay, where I was working on photos of sand and water, a direct extension of previous projects connected mainly with the recording of surfaces of dead or dying trees. Noticing similar sand formations nearer home, I included Pocitos Beach as a source of images.
Focussing on the sand brought my attention to the rubbish on the beach and I saw the possibility of recording this photographically.
I started taking pictures of bits of rubbish, which filled the frame, but then I saw a certain beauty in discarded articles lying on a background of pure sand. Photographs, in themselves, impart beauty into the subject taken, even rubbish, and in some of the photographs I started to work on the idea that beauty subverts the truth and seduces it out of context. For example, the fact that I could take a ‘beautiful’ photograph of a piece of broken glass embedded in pure sand, which could later find itself embedded in someone’s foot, or a half-buried plastic bag which would still be contaminating the beach in a million years time, interested me a lot.
Eventually I decided to spend a year recording the objects strewn all along Pocitos Beach, Montevideo, Uruguay. There are many types of rubbish, and I have tried to record all of them. There are beautiful and subversive photographs, photographs of discarded objects, of objects washed in from the river, objects washed down from the beach, objects pertaining to ‘Macumba’, objects which relate an event, ‘archaeological’ objects which have been buried and then uncovered by the tide, objects which are constantly being moved around by the tide, lost and discarded items of clothing, etc., etc..
I have taken the photographs looking directly down from above, as they would be seen if you were walking along the beach, the height from which I could take them being limited by how tall I am. The photographs can be looked at simply as a record of these different items lying on the beach, but they also furnish some sort of evidence, a testimony of happenings, events, lives - past, present and future (failed condoms!!), hopes and fears, irresponsibility, pollution, the destruction of the planet, our plastic existence, a consumer culture of bright wrappings, a record of time and movement, and of decay and death, and all a stone’s throw from Café Costa Azul and the ANCAP Petrol Station!
Sean Partridge