Review by Hans Hickerson ·
I recently read someone’s comment that there are two kinds of photobooks, art books and story books. A possible third category could be concept books.
El Retrato De Tu Ausencia is definitely based on a concept, an approach, an original idea. The author, Alejandro “Luperca” Morales, rephotographed Ciudad Jaurez newspaper photos that showed dead bodies in the streets – victims of Mexico’s drug wars. Before photographing them, however, Morales took an eraser and physically rubbed out the bodies.
Left are ghostly shadows and smoky clouds that can be read as traces of vaporous departed souls. The images are made even more mysterious and opaque given that printed words, forms, and colors bleed through the thin newsprint. They are blown up as well, which makes them pixelated and grainy, low contrast and blurred, the colors mostly muted. The technique turns raw, utilitarian documentary photos into images that gain graphic impact and become borderline abstract and artsy.
There are no captions, but an index with page numbers offers a list of titles, in Spanish, possibly taken from the newspapers where the photos appeared. “They executed three people.” “Decapitated.” “Directly in the head.” “He was already stiff.” “Blood on the highway.”
Besides the empty areas where bodies have been erased, we see shocked bystanders, including young schoolchildren, masked and heavily armed police officers and officials, bullet riddled cars, police tape, blood stains, stray dogs, and scattered street trash and roadway debris. These are not pleasant places to meet your end.
The book both documents and protests the violence it depicts. In a short text, Morales explains that he sees his photographs as a metaphor for ashes, and an “opportunity for mourning, a last image, a more dignified form of death.”
Does it work? The book is visually engaging. However, as for all art, you have to decide for yourself if the message hits home – if you find the book moving and memorable or merely interesting.
Hans Hickerson, Editor of the PhotoBook Journal, is a photographer and photobook artist from Portland, Oregon.
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Alejandro Morales – El Retrato De Tu Ausencia
Photographer: Alejandro “Luperca” Morales (born in Ciudad Juarez in 1990; lives in Nuevo Leon)
Publisher: Kult Books and Los Sumergidos © 2023
Language: English and Spanish
Text: Alejandro Morales
Design: Fernando Gallegos
Printed in Sweden
Soft cover with flip image; 74 photographs; Swiss binding; 112 pages; 17 x 22.5 cm; ISBN: 978-91-987606-5-1
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Articles and photographs published in the PhotoBook Journal may not be reproduced without the permission of the PhotoBook Journal staff and the photographer(s). All images, texts, and designs are under copyright by the authors and publishers.
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