alfredo de stéfano. the house and the grave in the landscape

8/3/2019 Alfredo de Stéfano. The House and the Grave in the Landscape

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ART AND CULTURE

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Alredo de Stéano** has consolidated his presence in Mexican photography as one o the artists who has most consistently worked with landscape in recent years. Perhaps

the most evident specicity in his case is that his works treat it more as a concept

than a topic. That is probably where the malleability that can be seen in lands cape as an

object o photography comes rom. In a certain way, we are talking about a subjectivity that

shares a kind o will and expresses itsel both spatially and temporally.

* Art curator and critic.

** Mexican photographer, www.adesteano.com

Alfredo de StéfAnoThe House and the Grave in the Landscape

Juan Antonio Molina*

Red Mummy in the White Desert-Sahara Desert, 2008. All the Deserts Are My Desert Series.



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Ladders to the Sky, 1999. Replenishing Emptiness Series.

The landscape in these photos

is not limited to a ragment o space outlined

and codifed by the photographic raming.

It is not only a space; it is a circumstance.



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The landscape in these photos is not limited to a ragment

o space outlined and codied by the photographic raming;

it is also the summary o a series o moments that cross each

other. It is not only a space; it is a circumstance.

To arrive at this interesting ormulation o the concept

o landscape, Alredo de Stéano has been polishing the re

sources that allow him to aestheticize the perception o spaceand time using metaphorical, dramatic elements. In this case,

aestheticizing also implies reproducing reality as ction; that is,

superimposing on the reality photographed a layer o meanings

that do not necessarily remain autonomous outside the pho

tographic act.

Even when Alredo de Stéano’s working process includes

the organization o ormal structures beore taking the pic

ture, and even when these structures seem to have sucient

ormal and aesthetic density to be able to unction auton

omously, like sculptures or installations, or example, the

truth is that their ull realization only happens in the act o

photography.

Actually, what De Stéano does is to pre construct the

photography and reconstruct the space to be photographed.

The important thing here is that what is photographed ismarked or photography. The photography becomes a kind

o destiny or nality o what is photographed; I mean that

Alredo de Stéano points to the space as something photo

graphable; he indicates that its destiny is in the image and

its origin is in the imagination.

For that reason, I have called these photographs “inscrip

tions on the landscape,” although this concept must not be

separated rom the notion o intervention. I in a previous

Blood Oering to the Licancabur-Atacama Desert , 2008. All the Deserts Are My Desert Series.



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stage o this artist’s work, putting texts and graphic signs made

the viewer think o a strategy o inscriptions on the photo

graphy, especially in the 1996 “Vestiges o Paradise” series,

now what can be seen is the inscription o photography in

space; and this always implies an act o intervention insepa

rable rom the concept o installation.It is not so much the articiality in and o itsel that gives

these operations their character o photographic inscriptions.

Actually, more than inscriptions o photography, we are talking

about inscriptions or photography. Whereas beore the text

ollowed the photo and incrusted itsel in it, now these ob

jects and space itsel become a text that precedes the photo.

Probably the possibility o understanding space as a text is one

o the traits characteristic o the new ormulations o land

scape art in contemporary photography.

Alredo de Stéano has been working on that possibility

since his rst photographic works. But his works tend to make

these processes complex to the extent that the conception

o space as text is accompanied by a treatment o space as a

basis or other signicative or textual elements.

In his works rom the middle o the last decade, thesemarks came to have a little more impact, above all because

o the protagonist role o light. In addition to the intrusive ele

ment o articial light as a ootprint indicating the human pre

sence, several o those photographs incorporated another no

less important component: the possibility o metaphorically

reading the lighting structure.

We could orce the reading o some o those images to

nd certain implications o violence; that would also help us

more precisely dene the ecologist discourse oten imposed

Firefies, 2003. Brief Chronicle of Light Series.



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on Alredo de Stéano’s photos, which was strengthenedabove all ater his 2002 “Inhabiting the Vacuum” exhibition.

In act, I tend to think o his work not as much as a support

or an ecologist position, but as a stimulus or refecting

about the passage o time. I De Stéano has resorted to the

space o the desert to do this, it is precisely because that is

an environment where the temporal can be perceived with

certain elasticity and where it can be “intervened” or altered.

Finally, Alredo de Stéano’s interventions are not only about

space, but also about time. His reerences to archaeology orpaleontology are in the nature o simulations directed at under

lining the temporal dimension in which the phenomena o

Nature, and, particularly, existence itsel are situated.

When De Stéano has worked with desiccated animals,

when he has placed or represented the bones o dead or

extinct animals, and even when he has led to the evocation

o absent subjects, he has placed us beore the certainty or

the possibility o death. In some way, the objects he organizes

Polar Circle in the Desert. 1999 . Replenishing Emptiness Series.

De Stéano polished the resources to aestheticize the perception o

space and time using metaphorical, dramatic elements; aestheticizing

also implies reproducing reality as fction.



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beore the camera are like simulations o monuments. They

have an evocative and commemorative unction, somehow

an homage to the absent.

The work that Alredo de Stéano has done in dierent

deserts o the world since the end o the last decade opens up

one o the periods in which his art has evolved most in tensely. The idea o death and absence has become more

emphatic, marking the desert with implications that involve

the landscape not as a geographic but a symbolic space.

In these photographs, the processes o signing that this

author uses become more evident, as does his interest in

marking the place, in giving it a meaning o localization, o

evoking a presence through the absence that the place expe

riences. Alredo de Stéano seems to be re inhabiting those

places, colonizing them in the sense that Heidegger gives the

term. This is why he has returned more insistently to struc

tures that we might consider associated with a primitive state:the house, the grave, the monument, and perhaps also the

altar, the place rom where the dead are remembered and

where their memory is kept (the stone, the burial mound,

the pyramid).

I previous works still led us to imagine the desert as a

virgin space, little by little, Alredo de Stéano has taken us

to an image o the desert as a space colonized by the humanpresence, ull o tracks and memories. It is not strange, then,

that in this stage, such orceul portraits appear, like those

in his 2008 project “Sahara,” or that in more recent works

the author himsel begins to appear in the photographs.

Little by little,

this photographer has taken us

to an image o the desert as a space

colonized by the human presence.

Waiting or the Glaciar to Melt, Iceland, 2011. All the Deserts Are My Desert Series.



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Cloud Bag. 2004. Brief Chronicle of Light Series.



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Despite the dramatic nature o these pieces, I think that

a slightly ironic tone can always be intuited, a tone that ap

pears intermittently throughout this author’s entire artistic

oeuvre. In addition to a particularly eectively channeled

sensibility, Alredo de Stéano’s work demonstrates an intel

ligent and always imaginative way o re elaborating not only

Orix-Namibia Desert , 2011. All the Deserts Are My Desert Series.

Waiting or the Sand Storm-Namibia Desert, 2011 . All the Deserts Are My Desert Series.

representations o space, but also o its most common impli

cations, surprising us every time with new gurations, even

when they originate in the most archaic symbologies. Perhaps

that is one o the qualities that places him among the most

original, versatile creators o contemporary Mexican pho

tography.

alfredo de stéfano. the house and the grave in the landscape

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