La carpeta de los diez
Vasari. Buenos Aires
The idea of grouping together was Fred Schiffer’s, and it was inspired by a similar model, an association of photographers formed at the end of the 19th century in London (Linked Ring Brotherhood), but the written pages were kept by Annemarie Heinrich. Thus at present Vasari Gallery is not only reconstructing the coming together of the members of La carpeta de los diez and the exhibitions they staged between 1952 and 1959, but it is also showing the work methodology of the group, displaying yellowish papers which reflect the photographers’ opinions about the work of their colleagues. La carpeta de los diez was a group of photographers gathering together in self-managed clinics (avant la lettre) aimed at discussing their images without any visible leaders, without any competing divas. The photographers placed a photograph and a blank page in a folder and circulated it among their peers for them to write down their comments, many of them typewritten. In just a few lines, each photographer expressed his opinion about the image submitted by another colleague. Without any opportunism, Eduardo Colombo, Pinélides A. Fusco, Ilse Meier, Anatole Saderman, George Friedman, Alex Klein, Max Jacoby, Juan Di Sandro, Hans Mann, José Malandrino, Boleslaw Senderowicz and Augusto Valmitjana also subscribed their commentaries, backing up their opinions in black over white.
Through heterogeneous approaches and processes, these professional photographers, trained and already recognized in the art milieu, contributed to the development and consolidation of photography in Argentina, where most of them had arrived fleeing from hunger, Nazism, and war; of the fourteen photographers who participated alternately in the meetings, only three had been born in the country. They never intended to start a school; they simply held an honest dialogue which included praise and criticism, analyzing their own works, whether represented by a common subject or by individual projects.
Curated by Alicia Sanguinetti and Marina Pellegrini, the exhibition has a great historical value; it gathers together around 50 images (many of them vintage); it showcases documents and old typewriters, lenses and other photography elements, and it offers technical excellence and a survey of canonical images and others rarely seen before. Torres-García’s strong personality can be perceived in a picture taken by Saderman,while Fusco crystallizes Perón and Eva’s embrace in the balcony of the Government House, and Heinnrich and Schiffer shine through their formal plays. Beautiful women can be seen in the suggestive photographs by Klein, Friedman, and Senderowicz in which modernism reigns, as it does in Jacoby’s.
