Andrés Pachón, in the last year, has developed his theoretical and artistic research with the photographic material of the Anthropology National Museum Documentation Department in Madrid, resulting in his Tropologías I-V series, which questions the anthropocentric European outlook that contain such images, mainly with the Spanish colonial imaginary nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
"The memory of my computer is my most important depot of works"
Since XVIII century, the colonial countries launched investigation programs to continue with the conqueror dream. Bring to european laboratories samples of the exotic nature. The idea was to dominate nature through knowledge. This samples of nature needed to be preserved all along delivery. Sociologist Bruno Latour called them “Móviles inmutables”. It was physical representations that can be moved in space without changing. In case of antrophometric studies, the most successful “móviles inmutables” of that time, were negative faces in plaster of the different ethnics, and afterwards, photographic portraits. All those “movies inmutables” got together in collections, laboratories, collectors and museums.
Early 1900, the History and Natural Museum of Paris send the busts represented in the photographs to the Anthropology Museum of Madrid, thanks to Dr. Ripoche. He was a canary researcher based in Paris. He was the intermediary between french and spanish governments to the acquisition of some reference collections. In fact, photographs and anthropological busts.
“Tropologias V” starts from Jose Maria Lanzarote Guiral´s work. He stands that this busts are copies made from original series saved in Paris. Made from other positives, not from represented model, not even from the original mould of the first serie. Copies of copies, the only value was to satisfy knowledge and fast diffusion.
All these photographs are like a mirror game where digital media and synthetic 3D images, transform realistic resources in irreality servants, the footprint of the physical world has been blurred.
This project has been developed through the collaboration of the Documentation Department of the National Museum of Anthropology in Madrid, where the original material is. Also through the collaboration of researcher Jose Maria Lanzarote Guiral.
Where.- La New Gallery. Carranza, 6 - 28004 Madrid. Spain.
When.- from 14 November to 27 December 2014.
