JAIME BOLOTINKSY'S EVERYDAY ELEMENTS - TRIBUTE ARTIST AT PINTA BAphoto 2024

The Tribute Artist section of Pinta BAphoto celebrates a decade exhibiting the trajectory of photographers who had an active participation in the field, seeking to recover and value their figure. This edition, curator Francisco Medail presents Jaime Bolotinsky, a Russian-born photographer based in Buenos Aires who was a pioneer when it came to composing his portraits, using everyday elements and a precise handling of light.

October 25, 2024
JAIME BOLOTINKSY'S EVERYDAY ELEMENTS - TRIBUTE ARTIST AT PINTA BAphoto 2024

Jaime Bolotinksy | Fotoplastic

Jaime Bolotinsky (1894-1967) was a Russian-born photographer based in Buenos Aires since the early 20th century. In addition to his work at Foto Nobel, the studio he directed for decades in front of Plaza Italia, Bolotinsky developed an unusual personal photographic production for his time. It is a gallery of portraits made from everyday elements. A group of characters shaped by their cultural background, their capacity for imagination and an exquisite handling of light.

 

Salons such as Nordiska Kompaniet, La Rural and the Sociedad Hebraica Argentina gave shelter to his work and numerous graphic media echoed his exhibitions. In spite of the important circulation that his work had during those years, it is difficult to trace a place of inscription for Bolotinsky in the history of Argentine photography. His context of artistic affiliation places him less close to photographers Grete Stern or Anatole Saderman than to writers José González Castillo and Raul Gonzalez Tuñon or sculptor Stephan Erzia.

However, if we try to trace a transhistorical genealogy, his work can be inscribed in a map of artists ranging from the mannerist Giuseppi Arcimboldo to the Argentine collective Mondongo, including the illustrator Pablo Bernasconi or the photographer Vic Muñiz. Moreover, Bolotinsky's images are plausible to be understood in a surrealist key, since they share with this movement an elemental operation: the strategy of estrangement. His portraits produce a strange, unfamiliar perception, which disinhabits the alienated perception of everyday objects.

 

A towel, a hat, the camera and the treatment of light. With the simplicity of these elements Bolotinsky produced a series of images that functioned as a prelude to surrealism and today reconstruct a new link in the history of Argentine photography.

 

Francisco Medail

Curator of the section.

 

Pinta BAphoto 2024. October 24-27, 2024. La Rural, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Tickets here.

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