« Había en su mirada más palabras que en cualquier voz » : Mineros, documentaire photographique et anthropologique des mines boliviennes
“I entered the country by its most painful door” declared the Swiss photographer Jean-Claude Wicky at the end of a long and patient work of documentary photography about the Bolivian mines of Potosi, realized between 1984 and 2001 in a hostile and fierce universe, inseparable from the history of Bol...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Institut des Amériques
2019-03-01
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| Series: | IdeAs |
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| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/ideas/4902 |
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| Summary: | “I entered the country by its most painful door” declared the Swiss photographer Jean-Claude Wicky at the end of a long and patient work of documentary photography about the Bolivian mines of Potosi, realized between 1984 and 2001 in a hostile and fierce universe, inseparable from the history of Bolivia. This article proposes to present the book Mineros. Bolivia (2007), result of this work hailed by critics for its artistic and documentary quality. More than a reflection on the anthropological and historical dimension of the work, the point of this article is to study some of the characteristics of the pictures, which introduce the public into a confined, raw and bitter world, without ever distorting or caricaturing the complex reality of which it testifies. We will also take an interest in the process by which Wicky decided, after exposing his work in many cities in the world, to give each of the miners immortalized by his photographs a copy of the book. Their gratefulness and emotional reactions decided him to dedicate a video documentary to this return to the mines, twenty-six years after the beginning of the project. He directed the documentary film Todos los días la noche (2010), in which scenes of encounter with mineworkers alternate with explanations of the mining history of the region, while introducing a subtle reflection on the relationship between the artist and the people who inspired him and fed his work for decades. |
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| ISSN: | 1950-5701 |