Colombian photograher Erika Diettes’ work will be featured as part of SFUAD’s Artists for Positive Social Change with an opening Sept. 16 and an artist’s talk the following day.
Shrouds
posted by Nicholas Beckman
“How do you photograph the disappeared?” Erika Diettes posed this question to herself when planning out her photographic project, Sudarios. The disappeared in her case were the victims of violent attacks on Columbian citizens by the guerrilla warfare that has plagued their country over the past 60 years. Her final execution of this rather intense and emotionally exhausting subject matter seemed so intentional and precise that one hardly questions the story behind it. Displayed at the Immaculate Heart of Mary Chapel, due to the sacred and pristine nature of Catholic churches, Diettes aligned 16 silk-screen photographic prints of women’s faces, all in black and white. The prints were hung from the ceiling and arranged symmetrically, allowing the pictures to blend together from certain angles and come together as a whole when viewed from the center. Diettes interviewed and photographed the victims’ family members—all of whom were women in the project’s final draft—at each individual’s exact moment of horror. During interviews that spanned up to three hours in duration, Diettes had a therapist sit down with victims and guide them through the atrocities they had witnessed firsthand. Although Diettes hadn’t originally planned to only use female subjects, as she gathered interviews and looked at the photographs, she realized that the emotion drawn from the viewer looking at a woman’s face who has experienced a traumatic event, is similar to that of a mother’s loss of her son. This loss of love, she said, is how she wants the viewer to feel while walking past the photographs. According to Diettes, the pictures she has displayed were at the moment in the interview that the subject couldn’t open their eyes. She felt that this moment where loss has been established, but not yet accepted, is the key to giving the disappeared...
Recent Comments