© Diego Alonso: “Khasi Fields”. Analog photography.
Written or manipulated photographs are not something new, in a glimpse we can think about Joel Peter Witkin, Arnulf Rainer, Gérard Ritcher, or more recently Shirin Neshat, Jim Golberg, Jose Ramon Bas. Just to enumerate a few artists who have used manipulation to distract from the immediate meaning of their images, or to complete an idea for which more than an image is needed.
© Diego Alonso: “Memoria”. Analog photography.
In Diego Alonso´s case the texts appears on the images to juxtapose two languages. One visual contemporary language put together with an archaic tribal language. An abstract language as it is the Khasi language from Meghalaya which was written for the first time with the first arrival of western missionaries, against a visual language as photography. It is not arbitrary to mix these two languages. The written texts over the images talk about legends, folk tales about the beginning of time and the moral rules that these tribes have been verbally carrying for centuries. Something near to what photography does today in our society, divulge cosmogony, documentation and the arts of our culture.
In this case the artist uses a documental story and his personal experience to surpass the referential and poetic functions (Jakobson) of photography, and to erase the conflict of trueness that is innate in any photography. To be able to speak about photography as a language, instead of take it as a tongue. The visual language of our times, which is a language that destroys memory, confronted to a verbal language, previous to writing, which creates and feeds a continuously growing collective memory, generation after generation.
Horacio Basilicus
Diego Alonso (Buenos Aires, 1973). Lives and works in Madrid. Immediately after graduation audiovisual design in 1995 traveled to India, where he remained for nearly a decade. After a sabbatical year traveling the subcontinent back to Bombay (now Mumbai) its starting point. Make advertising photography work always within the line or travel document, allowing you to travel extensively within India and Asia. In 1998 he made his first exhibition, "The Flow" at the National Center for The Performing Arts (NCPA) in Mumbai, the city where you live. In 2000 the Exhibition "Nothing." His commercial work turns more toward studio experimentation. In 2006, published in Buenos Aires "Walking" a confusing and loaded photo diary that takes him to Milan where he lived for a year and Madrid where he made his exhibition "Everything ... Nothing" (2006) in the Gallery Rita Castellote. In "Meghalaya" (2011) retrieves and interprets work in India between 1998 and 2004.
