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Daniel
Hernández: Eros and Thanatos
Aldo Castillo Gallery
23 January-28 February 1998
by Michael Weinstein
Political art is not in fashion on the contemporary cultural scene.
The global eclipse of the left after the fall of communism, and
the hegemony of a neo-liberal economy and cultural conservatism
have driven artists back to modernism, or into themselves. Art photographers
in particular have fled from Postmodern cultural criticism, seeking
to perfect and experiment with their dizzyingly variegated medium,
or to register their personal dramas in images.
Photographers from the poorer and neo-colonized parts of the world
have a greater difficulty in expunging politics from their art.
They feel a need to bear winess to suffering and to make manifest
their indignation against injustice. Yet these photographers are
globalized sophisticates, inmersed in the height of their cultural
times and very much in a fashion that they co-create.
Guatemalan photo-artist Daniel Hernández exemplifies the
predicament of the contemporary photographer with a political conscience.
Featured recently in the "Heads Up: New Faces in Contemporary
Art" exhibit at Aldo Castillo Gallery, Hernández attemps
to work his way through the regnant apolitical genres to a political
statement that does not give way to propaganda. He is a personal
dramatist who needs not so much give his private problems a public
dimension, in the manner of modern political art, as use the public
situation as a metaphor for his existential agonies, and vice-versa.
Hernández's project, which he executes through life-size
black-and-white photographs, is to incite remembrance of Guatemala's
recent 36-year civil war.
Using his friends, he poses them in symbolic scenarios to honor
the dead, and to instill a sense of the horror of violence, and
of the danger from the political right. Yet Hernández can
only do this through his personal sentimentality.
The "Eros and Thanatos" series is emotionally expressive
and, indeed, romantic-running the gamut from political to personal
emphases. However, Premonition is the only one of Hernández's
work that is successful in fulfilling the complex aspirations of
his project. A large portrait of a young man's head in profile,
surrounded by a border of 12 smaller photos of bodies mostly cut
of at the neck, Premonition is politically explicit enough to unequivocally
communicate Hernández's message, yet with great sensitivity.
The man, whose face is close to the right-handedge of the frame,
wears expression of reflective, even peaceful, concern as he contemplates
his impending fate.
Hernández's most stunning photograph, Pathway to Pain, which
rivals in it's clarity and piercing expression of complex emotion
the still dramas of Japanese master Eikoh Hosoe, has no direct political
content. We see a naked and handsome man lying across the railroad
tracks of an old bridge. The contrast between his soft, supple body
and his look of erotic pleasure, and the hard, unforgiving rails
and ties admirably communicates the deep existential conection that
Hernández discerns between love and death.
Interpreted through this image, the face of Premonition might be
so peaceful because it signifies not only reconciliation with death,
an embrace of it that undercuts the horror of repression and carnage.
Michael Weinstein is a professor of
political theory at Purdue University,
a Chicago photographic critic,
and a performance artist.
La fragilidad de Eros ante el implacable Thánatos
Obra reciente de Daniel Hernandez
Por Miguel Flores C.
"La mención es imposible sin el uso,
del mismo modo que la alegoría es impensable sin lo alegorizado
o la deconstrucción sin lo previamente construido"
¿Señal de los tiempos? (1)
Eros + Thánatos, ubica a Daniel Hernández como un
creador a través de la manipulación de la imagen.
Con esta muestra Hernández se sumerge en los conceptos del
arte contemporáneo(2) donde, "a similitud de los hermanos
Starn, utiliza la fotografía más allá de simplemente
una herramienta de dibujo rápido, y comprende cómo
las piezas y materiales fotográficos constituyen una nueva
paleta a estudiar por el artista del siglo XX."(3), y continua
demostrando su habilidad técnica en el laboratorio, evidente
en el minucioso proceso de revelado de grandes formatos fragmentados.
Es en la fragmentación donde la obra de Eros + Thánatos
adquiere una dimensión importante dentro de la trayectoria
artística de este fotógrafo perfeccionista, porque
a diferencia de sus anteriores trabajos, en esta ocasión
llega a las últimas consecuencias a través de la automutilación
del trabajo fotográfico, aspecto que años atrás
evadía. Toda la obra esta inmersa en las múltiples
posibilidades de la deconstrucción de la imagen. Pero cada
uno de los fragmentos se transforman en piezas únicas, universos
independientes dependiendo del contexto donde lo ubique como podemos
apreciar en las obras Umbral y La piedad de la muerte.
Eros + Thánatos es el resultado de la experimentación
que tiene como antecedente exposiciones anteriores donde inició
el proceso de cambio. Como determinante puede definirse la presentada
en la Universidad Rafael Landívar (4), y otra presentada
recientemente en España(5). Cabe mencionar que desde su exposición
Rostros de la Música, Hernández, manejó el
concepto de la "fotografía-objeto" al presentar
retratos de músicos dentro de escaparates planos, iniciándose
así el camino que lo condujo a la muestra de hoy.
Los conceptos de Eros + Thánatos son campo fértil
para la creación, considerados como conceptos contrapuestos
que llegan a necesitarse el uno del otro, teniendo como denominador
común el sufrimiento y el temor a lo desconocido. En esta
muestra Hernández no se desprende del desnudo masculino como
arquetipo de belleza, sino que además le adjudica el valor
de la vida. En esta ocasión lo suma a la muerte, vista como
el designio del fin absoluto de algo positivo y vivo, como un aspecto
perecedero y destructor de la existencia. Toda la colección
tiene su génesis en los múltiples contrasentidos que
se dan a diario en la sociedad guatemalteca. El binomio amor + muerte
es común en su generación.
Eros + Thánatos aporta a la vida artística de Hernández
la deshinibición de los marcos preconcebidos y el uso de
niveles sobre puestos, en obras como Sacro escarabajo y CHP-V-7,
la ofrecen al observador en otras lecturas de los hechos evidentes
a través de la imagen. El hecho de usar un negativo más
de una vez, nos muestra lo mutante del arte contemporáneo,
esto es claramente perceptible en obras como "La Piedad de
la Muerte" y Mater dolorosa. Hernández no puede ocultar
sus estudios de arquitectura, muchas de las obras de esta exposición
muestran el espíritu y la exactitud estructural, sumado a
una estética pulcra.
La coincidencia en las posiciones de los cuerpos masculinos y de
cadáveres encontrados en cementerios clandestinos, aluden
estereotipos de una composición clásica propia de
la iconografía del Renacimiento y el Barroco, sus modelos
se alejan de la belleza sublime de otras exposiciones, sus cuerpos
ahora son más naturales y menos rebuscados, tanto en la representación
de la muerte como para el espíritu del amor. El uso del foco
selectivo(6) brinda al observador una variedad de volumétrica
sobre determinados planos fotográficos.
Eros + Thánatos está concebida con dos grandes mundos
donde el "amor-vida" lo representan obras como Eros, El
Camino del Dolor, Ascensión, Umbral, Prisión Interior,
Encarnaciones y Premonición, mientras que la obra No oigo,
no veo, ...me callo constituye la pieza de unión entre los
universos de la vida y de la muerte. Bajo el dominio de Thánatos
son obvias Memoria, Mater dolorosa , La piedad de la muerte, CHP-V-7,
y Ángeles que entran en el campo de la destrucción
y muerte. Paradójicamente la obra que cierra e inicia este
ciclo es Sacro Escarabajo símbolo del retorno perpetuo en
culturas antiguas como la egipcia.
Todas la piezas que componen esta muestra conllevan a un mundo de
interpretaciones, todas las imágenes de Daniel Hernández
nos llevan a la meditación --a veces con espanto-- sobre
la fragilidad de Eros y la contundencia de la palabra muerte.
Guatemala, agosto de 1997.
__________________________________________
(1) Carlos Jiménez / Ruinas y duraciones de la fotografía
latinoamericana. / Lápiz 128-129. Feb. 1997 / Madrid, España.
(2) Hay que tomar en cuenta que interrogantes como ¿Por que
fragmentar la imagen? ¿Por que ubicar áreas en diferentes
niveles? ¿Por que desnudos? ¿Por qué esqueletos?
¿Por que la obra fotográfica debe poseer márgenes
en ángulo recto? No tienen sentido alguno.
(3) Manuel Santos / Tiempos de belleza y decadencia. / Revista Lápiz
No. 104 junio 1994 / Madrid, España.
(4) Cuatro fotógrafos, URL, Guatemala, agosto 1996.
(5) Galería de la Fundación CAM., octubre 1996 Alicante,
Valencia, España.
(6) Propiedad de la cámara que permite utilizar la profundidad
focal delgada para acentuar un elemento dado.
MEMORIA DE UN ANGEL
Daniel Hernández-Salazar
Seguimiento fotográfico de la intervención en espacios
públicos Angel Callejero
realizada en conmemoración del 1er. aniversario del asesinato
de Monseñor Juan Gerardi
Ciudad de Guatemala, 26 de abril de 1999.
Los años pasan
Se apilan como páginas de un libro
Todo queda impune
Tengo que gritarlo
La idea de pegar fotos en las calles me viene de muy atrás.
Para ser exacto, desde que un amigo me regaló un libro que
registraba en fotos cómo Ernest Pignon-Ernest instaló
una serie de litografías con la imagen del poeta Rimbaud
por las calles de Charleville, Francia. Pasó el tiempo, Luego
vi el trabajo del cubano Félix Gonzáles-Torres en
México y confirmé el interés de expresarme
en espacios públicos.
Mi proyecto original era instalar una fotocopia de la obra Para
que todos lo sepan en un muro localizado cerca de la plaza mayor
de la ciudad de Guatemala. Esa obra la dediqué a la memoria
de Monseñor Juan Gerardi Conedera, asesinado en esta ciudad
el 26 de abril de 1998 a golpes de piedra en la cabeza, dos días
después de publicar el informe sobre el proyecto de Recuperación
de la Memoria Histórica, REMHI. Este hizo referencia a 200,000
casos de violaciones de derechos humanos, ocurridos en Guatemala
durante los 36 años que duró la guerra civil en este
país. En febrero de 1999 decidí combinar mi deseo
de recordar y denunciar el no-esclarecimiento del crimen, con la
idea de "apropiarse" espacios públicos. De aquí
nació el proyecto para la intervención urbana Angel
Callejero.
Lo primero fue convencer a un buen grupo de personas a que colaboraran
conmigo en la intervención propiamente dicha, instalando
los murales, copia de la Obra original. Luego seleccionar los lugares
donde se instalarían de acuerdo a tres criterios: A) que
el lugar fuera simbólico en relación al crimen y a
su no-esclarecimiento; B) que por el lugar seleccionado pasara mucha
gente que lo viera. C) que el lugar tuviera una "magia"
particular. Esta etapa me tomó un par de semanas hasta definir
que serían 35 puntos.
La siguiente etapa fue encontrar el método más rápido
y clandestino posible, que permitiera instalar los murales en los
puntos seleccionados, en el menor tiempo y con el menor riesgo para
los participantes. La instalación se haría de noche
para que las imágenes sorprendieran al público la
mañana del 26 de abril, 1er. aniversario del asesinato de
Monseñor Gerardi. Ningún texto acompañaría
a la imagen, ya que ésta, estaba ya asociada al informe REMHI,
por el cual Monseñor Gerardi fue asesinado. Además
para que el efecto de la intervención fuera más cuestionador,
ambiguo e inquietante al observador.
La instalación se realizó como previsto y sin mayores
contratiempos, la noche del 25 de abril. A la mañana siguiente,
di inicio al seguimiento fotográfico de los ángeles.
Hice la excepción de trabajar esta ves en color (mi trabajo
es siempre en blanco y negro) para establecer una distancia entre
los murales, las metáforas, y la realidad que permaneció
en color. Logrando así un diálogo entre las dos dimensiones.
A los pocos días empezó lo que llamé "la
cacería de los ángeles", por parte de personas
o instituciones que se sintieron aludidas o agredidas por la presencia
de los murales en ciertos puntos. Como anécdota hubo un caso
en que "apareció" una piedra similar a la que supuestamente
fue utilizada para asesinar a Monseñor Gerardi, al pie de
la imagen que se instaló frente al obelisco del monumento
a los Próceres de la Independencia. En otros casos, y según
se fue entendiendo el significado de la instalación, los
ángeles fueron siendo "eliminados" por "desconocidos".
Me parece importante mencionar dentro de estos, los que estaban
instalados en: Estadio del Ejército, Campo de Marte, Antigua
Escuela Politécnica y Policía Nacional.
Los demás murales fueron desapareciendo con el tiempo. Más
rápido cuando llegaron las lluvias. Fue muy interesante ver
la vida de estos seres transcurrir rápidamente, recordando
la de muchas personas que fueron desaparecidas. Vi en las piezas
que se despegaban, páginas de informes o listados que iban
cayendo lentamente al paso de los días.
El periodista Maurice Echeverría escribió sobre esta
intervención: "Lo que se da uno cuenta es que el arte
no es o no debería ser mero complemento de una realidad social,
política, o individual, sino síntoma, signo, símbolo,
representación y verdad. Para siempre el Nunca más
tendrá algo de ángel surcado de realidad y tono sepia.
El arte nos redime del crimen. Unos ojos nos miran desde cualquier
esquina."
Daniel Hernández-Salazar, 26 de julio del 2000.
Death in Guatemala
By Judith Barry
From the November, 1998 Journal of the International Association
of Phisicians in AIDS Care.
When I worked as a photojournalist, my objective was to produce
truthful images reflecting the living conditions in Guatemala. Now,
working as an artist, I want my work to call public attention to
what has happened, so that it can never happen again.
- Daniel Hernández-Salazar
Nearly three years ago the 36-year civil war in Guatemala officially
ended with the election in January 1996, of President Alvaro Arzú
Irigoyen. The subsequent peace accord between the government and
the leftist guerrillas has led to a reduction in reporting of human
rights violations. However, Guatemala still has the second highest
per-capita crime rate in Latin America, second only to Columbia.
The January 1998 terrorist attack on a busload of St. Mary's College
students and faculty underscores the degree to which civil rights
and safety are still in jeopardy in Guatemala.
This violence has its roots in 1954 when President Dwight D. Eisenhower
authorized the CIA to overthrow the lawfully elected government
of Jacobo Arbenz at the behest of the United Fruit Company, now
known as Chiquita-Brands International. Recently, the well-publicized
case of Jennifer Harbury, a Harvard-trained lawyer and US citizen
married to a Guatemalan commando, has focused public attention on
the long-term nature of the CIA's involvement. When her husband,
Efraín Bámaca, "disappeared" after being
wounded in combat, the Guatemalan military maintained that he had
died immediately, but later US Senator Robert Torricelli (D.-NJ)
confirmed publicly that Bámaca had been taken into custody
by the Guatemalan army, tortured and finally extrajudicially executed.
High-ranking CIA officials were intimately acquainted with the circumstances
of Bámaca's death although their culpability was never proved.
However, the global publicity surrounding this case led President
Bill Clinton to order an official inquiry into these and other cases
involving US citizens in Guatemala. Ultimately, several CIA employees
were disciplined and two were dismissed.
One of the many difficulties Harbury faced in trying to ascertain
what had happened to her husband was discovering in which of the
many clandestine and unmarked mass graves he was buried. With the
end of the war the discovery of these sites led to the necessary
process of exhuming and identifying the bodies. A number of people
volunteered to help including Daniel Hernández-Salazar, a
Guatemalan artist and former photojournalist for Reuters and the
Associated Press. During this period Hernández-Salazar produced
the remarkable images, popularly known as the "angel"
series, which have become the symbols of human rights in Guatemala.
As Hernández-Salazar was working in the graves, he became
fascinated with the beauty and poetic quality of some of the human
bones. In particular, the scapulae reminded him of angel wings.
He first combined them with male figures who covered their eyes,
ears, and mouth with their hands, symbolizing the self-imposed blindness,
deafness, and silence of the Guatemalan people to the murder of
thousands of "enemies" of the Guatemalan military during
the three-and-a-half decade war of counterinsurgency.
These images came to the attention of the Catholic Archbishop's
office in Guatemala which commissioned a fourth "angel"
with its mouth open to symbolize the responsibility to speak the
truth--the truth recorded in the Project for the Recovery of Historic
Memory. The "angel" pictures are the cover art for this
four-part document detailing over 37,000 human rights violations,
most of which were at the behest of the Guatemalan army.
Two days after the public presentation of this report in the Cathedral
of Guatemala City on April 24, 1998, the bishop who commissioned
the study, Monsignor Juan Gerardi, was bludgeoned to death with
an eight-pound block of cement. The bishop's skull was crushed.
His brains were splattered on the floor of his garage. His face
was so disfigured that he could only be identified by a ring on
his finger. Forty-eight hours later thousands of Guatemalan citizens
marched in a silent protest, carrying placards adorned with large
blow-ups of Hernández-Salazar's "angel" photos.
Subsequently, these images have been widely exhibited on television,
in newspapers, on Web sites devoted to Guatemala, and in art galleries
such as the Aldo Castillo Gallery in Chicago and the Primary Object
Gallery in San Antonio, Texas. The following interview took place
in September 1998.
Journal: What led you to volunteer to work in the mass graves?
Hernández-Salazar: I have always been interested in
facing challenges in my life and making other people do the same.
Exposure to the social and psychological effects of this civil war
made me find a way to represent what I felt. I also believed that
it was very important to make people aware of what happened during
those years. The testimony of those terrible things are the remains
of the victims buried in the clandestine graves, so I decided to
include them in my art.
When I worked as a photojournalist, my objective was to produce
truthful images reflecting the living conditions of this country.
Now, working as an artist, I want to produce powerful images to
make people here understand the importance of exhuming our recent
past. Simultaneously, I want to get the rest of the world involved
in what happened here.
When I worked with news agencies I had the chance to take photos
of the exhumations, but I always wished for more time so that I
could make a personal interpretation of what I saw. Press agencies
are always rushing to be first with pictures. Now that I am working
for myself, I am able to invest as much time as I need to produce
the images. More than helping to identify the remains of the victims,
I want to call public attention to what has happened--to use the
power of these images to emphasize that this must never happen again.
It is similar to the message a visitor receives at the US Holocaust
Museum.
Journal: Who are in these graves?
Hernández-Salazar: The people buried in the graves
are ordinary people: peasants in the countryside, students, union
workers, and human rights activists from the cities, all of whom
were actively struggling for their rights. Additionally, there are
other victims who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong
time.
Journal: What in particular led you to conceive the "angel"
series?
Hernández-Salazar: The idea for the "angel"
series came to me in July 1997 after the exhumation of nine peasants
in a grave on a remote farm. The peasants were murdered by the Guatemalan
army after protesting that their salaries had not been paid for
two years. The "angel" series is part of a larger series,
"Eros+Thanatos," where I combined images of male nudes
with human remains to represent my thoughts about life and death.
I wanted to show how the Guatemalan people do not want to face their
problems, especially the violence and massacres that happened during
the armed conflict. I also wanted to show the impossibility of free
expression.
I proposed the fourth "angel" with its mouth open to the
director of the archbishop's human rights office after they decided
to use the "angel" series to illustrate the four-volume
report of the Project for the Recovery of Historic Memory (Proyecto
Interdiocesano de Recuperación de la Memoria Historica/acronym
REMHI). With the addition of the fourth "angel" to the
three earlier ones, I made a new piece "Esclarecimiento"
which became the poster for the presentation of the REMHI report
on April 24, 1998.
Journal: What have been the reactions to the images?
Hernández-Salazar: Strong. I remember the comment
of a secretary when she saw the fourth (speaking) "angel."
The image was printed on the invitation card for the presentation
ceremony at the Cathedral in Guatemala City. She said, "It
is beautiful...but it scares me." And a woman at the Aldo Castillo
Gallery in Chicago told me that the pictures expressed the feelings
of a close friend who left Guatemala because of death threats.
Journal: What is the Project for the Recovery of Historic
Memory?
Hernández-Salazar: The project was conceived by Monsignor
Juan Gerardi who directed the project until the presentation of
the report and his assassination two days later. His team of sociologists,
psychologists, historians and lawyers, working with the Catholic
Church in every region of Guatemala, collected thousands of testimonies
given by victims of the war, their relatives, and members of the
security forces--the army, paramilitary groups, and death squads--describing
crimes committed during the war. This team classified and analyzed
all the information to produce the four-book report, "Guatemala,
Never Again." The first book is about the effects of violence
(cover image: angel covering his eyes); the second book (cover image:
angel covering his mouth) describes the structure of the repressive
forces and the torture techniques that were used; the third book
(cover image: angel covering his ears) discusses the historic events
that provoked the war; and the fourth book (cover image: angel with
his mouth open, speaking) contains the names of more than 20,000
victims who died during the war.
Journal: What was the reaction of the Guatemalan army to
the report, especially since they are charged with the majority
of the 37,000 human rights abuses recounted in it?
Hernández-Salazar: The first reaction was silence.
After that, they tried to minimize the information written in the
report. Colonel Noak, an army officer (the army's former spokesman)
who was interviewed by the short-wave radio station Radio Netherlands
two-and-a-half months ago, said the army should ask forgiveness
from the people for the "excesses" it committed during
the war. Shortly after his interview was broadcast, he was captured
and imprisoned. The reason the army gave for his arrest was that
he spoke without permission. One month later, he was released. This
shows how the army, as in other instances here, doesn't want to
face what it did.
Journal: Was there a relationship between the unveiling of
the report and Monsignor Gerardi's assassination?
Hernández-Salazar: Nothing has been proved, but the
Catholic Church, human rights groups, and many people believe he
was killed because of the report. There is very little hope that
the actual murderer(s) and the intellectual murderer(s) behind the
assassination will be captured. Recently Father Orantes, Gerardi's
assistant at his parish church, was arrested and charged with the
murder. Monsignor Gerardi's corpse will be exhumed so it can be
re-examined. There is a lot of confusion. People who do not like
the report want it to be forgotten. But the report is circulating
widely. The first edition of 2,500 copies sold out. There will be
another edition of 5,000 by the end of this year. Plus 150,000 copies
were published in newspaper format and distributed free. There are
offers to do editions in other languages. I think the bishop's murder
was politically motivated and all this contradictory information
(disinformation) is intended to confuse public opinion, dilute the
report's impact, and make it more difficult to resolve the crime.
Journal: How did the silent protest after the assassination
come about?
Hernández-Salazar: I think it was organized by the
Catholic Church and various human rights organizations. The Archbishop's
human rights office initially printed posters with the "angel"
photos to announce the presentation ceremony at the Cathedral. Since
the Church still had some posters when Monsignor Gerardi was killed,
they distributed them so that people could use them as placards
in the protest march. And some people who had already received the
posters brought them as well.
Journal: What do you see as the most effective site for your
images--television, newspapers, the Gerardi Web site?
Hernández-Salazar: If I think "effective"
depends on how many people saw the images and got the message, I
would say the poster was the most effective medium because it was
everywhere. Also the newspapers, because the images appeared there
so frequently. But if I understand "effective" as the
place where the images were best presented and observed, I would
say the galleries here and abroad.
Journal: What has been the most effective medium for reaching
people in Guatemala?
Hernández-Salazar: I think the poster because the
people really liked it. Many of the posters hanging in churches
and universities were taken by people who wanted to have one. People
framed them and hung them in their homes and businesses. I was very
sad when the bishop was killed, but at the same time I was proud
to see my work in the hands of so many people who found it representative
of what they wanted to say in that moment during the march. In some
way they "appropriated" the images as their own. I can
compare my sensation to that of a composer when he hears one of
his compositions sung by hundreds of people because they like and
identify with it.
Judith Barry is an artist and writer who lives in New York.
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