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Diettes, Erika : Sudarios ("shrouds") : The Exhibition Catalog

Erika Diettes Studios, Bogota, Colombia, 2012

First Edition / First Printing. As New in No Dust Jacket, As Issued. 30 pages. Commemorative Catalog. Collection of extreme close-up, black-and-white portraits of weeping women. One of the most evocative and moving portrait collections of our time, presented as a Souvenir. The images are all culled from Erika Diettes' Artist Book of the same name. There is no ISBN. The Catalog is now rare. An austerely elegant production by Erika Diettes: Regular-sized volume format. Photographs and text by Erika Diettes. This is no ordinary catalog: Each portrait is reproduced on onion-skin, translucent paper (to suggest fragility and pain) to the highest standards. In publisher's original, pristine-white envelope. Without DJ, as issued. Presents, in a Commemorative Souvenir format, Erika Diettes' "Sudarios". Heart-rending. "My decision to create this work comes from some questions which have remained from previous photographic series. They are consequences of the same process which began with my Series, 'Silencios' (2004), which deals with survivors of the Second World War who live in Colombia. They are also to be found in 'Rio Abajo' (2008), a Series which deals with the victims of forced disappearance, and 'A Punta de Sangre' (2008), a Series in which I examine the idea of the search for the bodies of The Disappeared by their families who, in the midst of despair, find a ray of hope in the vultures that might lead them to the remains of their loved ones. I have received the testimonies of more than 300 victims of the violence in Colombia. They have confided intimacies of this violence to me: Not only its harrowing details, but the way they rebuild their lives and keep going despite what they have suffered. Many times, with my camera, I have been a witness of the moment when people have to close their eyes as they recall the event which divided their life into two parts. The intention of the 'Sudarios' Series is to enable the spectator to enter into and walk through these impenetrable and apparently alien worlds, when he observes that moment in which these women close their eyes because they find no other way to communicate the true dimension of the horror which they witnessed and the intensity of the sorrow they were subjected to. The women are first-hand witnesses of acts of horror. They were forced to feel on their own flesh or in front of their own eyes that there is no difference between man and the most savage beasts of nature. Or rather, that there is a difference, and it is that we are the only species capable of mass murder and the only ones who do not adapt to our own kind" (Erika Diettes). Erika Diettes holds a Master's Degree in Anthropology and was recently selected as one of the leading 180 thinkers in Latin America. Like Boltanski's work, Diettes' imagery resonates precisely because she uses the most basic elements of a human life. As such, her work is a radical departure from the more elaborate, ritualistic, even fetishistic photography we generically associate with Latin America (she is, after all, an anthropologist/social thinker as well as an artist/photographer, of the first rank in both instances). An absolute "must-have" title for Erika Diettes collectors. This Commemorative Souvenir is now collectible. As far as we know, this is the only copy available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright, a pristine beauty. A rare copy thus. 25 plates. One of the most brilliant artist/photographers of our time. A fine copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER ERIKA DIETTES TITLES IN OUR CATALOG).

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