The Depth of the Surface

Mauricio Alejo
● MASIN Museo de Arte de Sinaloa

Trying to find a common theme among artists as diverse as those featured in this 16th Photography Biennale is a daunting task, especially given that the exhibition entailed an open, countrywide call for submissions. But if not a common theme, there is a common way of approaching photography in all the works presented here, and it has to do with the weakening of the relationship between photography and reality.

All the artists featured here share an awareness that the truths put forth by photography do not belong to reality, but instead to a world that is constructed in images. This world is not interposed between us and reality, but rather has itself become real. The realization that the image has lost the ability to serve as a bridge to the "world" manifests itself in many of the pieces here as a growing opacity that reduces the depth of photographic representation and focuses our attention instead on the surface as a material and an object.

Though this opacity is not literal, it manifests itself in that it creates a tension on the surface, bringing visual or conceptual relations to the fore. Thus, access to the referent becomes secondary and one's attention turns towards structure itself and the meanings or experiences it produces. This explains, among other things, why artists are increasingly dealing with photographic archives, which also appear in this show and function as an alternate universe—a legible one where collective and personal memory is encoded, and which can be reconfigured to produce other possibilities of experiencing the real.

In order to broaden the discussion, I decided to invite a few established artists with a solid body of work who have contributed lucid opinions to the understanding of photography. Thus I wish to thank Iñaki Bonillas, Jonathan Hernández and Diego Berruecos for participating, as their work has fostered a visual dialogue that contributes much to our understanding of this collective artistic concern.