I had just arrived in Buenos Aires from Madrid. I stayed a week in PhotoEspaña 2012, perhaps the leading photography festival -the largest, the one that has the most exhibitions, etc. etc. etc.- which takes place once a year in the world.
I went to give a three-day workshop where we had fun like kids, together with 45 students. We dressed up as toucans, palm trees, maraca players, frogmen, Carmen Miranda. We got into a round paddling pool... And furthermore we took photos.
From all the festival, the hundreds of thousands of pictures I saw, there were three that stayed with me... which marked me... which will never leave me.
One is a Marilyn Monroe portrait in black and white, copied on gelatin silver paper, chemical, half out of focus. The desolation and the fragility of the human being represented in an image. Another is an aerial view of San Pablo, taken by young Tuca Vieira, on the edge of a shanty town with a spiral building that has private swimming pools on each floor -impressive. The most poetic image, the strongest, which talks about the central situation , the spirit of Latin America in its most stark and poetic expression. I think it's the best picture of the Latin American "issue" I have seen in recent years. He gives the title of "Tropical Schizophrenia" to the exhibition. But the picture that most caught my attention, which summarizes everything I feel about the situation of the world today, is a photograph taken for publicity purposes, which is around Madrid, in the subways, on billboards, in magazines... Surely it must also be in NY, in Mexico City, Sao Paulo and London by now.
Each time I passed by it, I stared at it for several seconds (minutes?) to try to decipher it. Let me see if I understand: My time is now. It is now or never. One has to arrive first. Grab the ball. Put the carrot before the donkey. Anything goes: elbowing, and treading on the chubby friend´s little finger at the side, cheating, turning a blind eye, holding on. The secret is to find a target. One motivation: think of the family, of progress, of the car payment, losing weight gained from all the wine and ´mortadela´ meat... We have to win now. Never mind the guys in the bar on the corner , those in the San Telmo bar, who spend all day talking through their hats about beer and fags.
That's your past. It doesn’t matter what happens on the other side of the Riachuelo River, nor pollution in the Quilmes River nor central heating in the Borda Institute. As the León Gieco song says: "Think of nothing." At that time, the millisecond of the start, you mustn´t think about anything. The Amazon doesn´t matter, nor does the Chaco Boreal nor damage from soybean monoculture nor short term global temperature changes, nor wars for oil, nor the painful exile of the Sahrawi people.
Neither does the compact mass with 16 tons of plastic bags matter, floating three km from Easter Island and on which the giant iguanas -those that apparently have been on the islands for 5000 years- which have got used to laying eggs in that gigantic plastic eyesore, and there are already two generations of animals that feed on garbage waste of sushi, McDonald's boxes and remains of mustard, ketchup, detergent, hard drives, mobile phone cases, network cables and Styrofoam. They eat Styrofoam balls.
They changed the DNA in three generations, but it doesn´t matter. Anyway, they are far away. Let the Chileans fix it, since the islands are closer to them. Or let the UN fix it... or Greenpeace. But do not distract me. My time is now. And do not even think about saying the word loser.
You can -only you. And, since we are here, let´s get to the main point: Above all else, buy your Nike trainers. Be a Nike man. Prove to the person next to you that your Nike is bigger; more powerful, more playful. Show yourself that you can win. No matter for what reason or purpose, nor why, nor how. You are a Nike man and you have to win.
Assert your time. Make it count. Play the fool, but do not let on. And do not worry if you do not understand well. Don´t translate.
Make it count!
Marcos López