The time of things. About La Ausencia of Santiago Porter

• Main Author: Paola Cortes-Rocca
• Format: Article
• Language: Spanish
• Published: Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata 2015-09-01
• Series: Estudios de Teoría Literaria
• Subjects: fotografía; afecto; trauma; derechos humanos
• Online Access: http://fh.mdp.edu.ar/revistas/index.php/etl/article/view/1247

In his photographic work The Absence, Santiago Porter gathers portraits and objects: photographs of relatives of the victims of the attack on Argentina Israelite Mutual Association in 1994 and objects that used to belong to the deaths. Far from referentiality and witnessing, the work of Porter reviews the gaze as a way of encountering the other and as a bond that solidifies certain forms of the community. The photographic image is marked by reality: not because as proof of existence, or due to its resemblance to what it shows, but because it is subject to time. The real (as a temporal and special net) gets into the photographic image, it is its condition and its materiality. Photography challenges the tripartite organization of time: images do not follow each other, they die and survive in ways that differs to those of other species.