10 Argentine Photographers You Need to Know

2. Alessandra Sanguinetti

Sanguinetti was born in New York in 1968 but lived her whole life in Argentina until a decade ago. Her most famous work revolves around the documentation of her cousins Guille and Belinda just outside Buenos Aires. Initially wanting to photograph the farm on which the young girls lived, she ended up making them the protagonists of her work because they wouldn’t stop posing and pestering. She followed and captured their daily lives over the years, as their bodies changed from those of young girls to women through motherhood. The series, published in a book called “The Adventures of Guille and Belinda and the Enigmatic Meaning of Their Dreams” perfectly captures summer evenings spent imagining, wandering and pretending.

3. Adriana Lestido

Lestido is a contemporary photographer who has documented the struggles of humanity by capturing the stories of marginalised groups in Argentina. She believes that the mother-daughter relationship is the most complex relationship that exists and has always been fascinated by maternal instinct. All her black and white photographs from 1977 to 2007 revolved around union, pain, the absence of paternal figures and the difficult place women occupy in society. She has published several books showcasing her superb photographs: Madres e hijas and Mujeres presas. In 1995 she became the first Argentine photographer to receive the Guggenheim Fellowship and in the same year coordinated a workshop in Ezeiza women’s prison outside Buenos Aires to teach the inmates photography. People are always the main subject of her work.

4. Alejandro Kirchuk

Kirchuk is a young photographer who graduated from Andy Goldstein Photography School in Buenos Aires. His projects are mainly personal documentations of life in South America, most notably “Borrowed Lives” and “Never Let You Go“, which earned his first prize in the “Daily life stories” contest by World Press Photo. “Never Let You Go”, unlike the Justin Bieber song, will send shivers down your spine. Alejandro documents the long wait, the patience, the loneliness, the love and the affection of an old man who takes care of his dying wife, suffering from Alzheimers Disease. You can follow his Instagram here.

5. Marcos López

López is considered as one of Argentina’s leading pioneers in contemporary art. After starting his professional life in engineering, he quickly gave that up to dedicate his time to photography. He portrays Latin America in a dramatic, hyperbolic and somewhat surrealist and comical way. His bold use of color has been described as an indication of social circumstances, customs and regional stereotypes. (He will be holding a workshop at the “Voices and Sights. Art and Resistance in the Ghetto” event on December 6th.)

6. Marcelo Brodsky

Brodsky is primarily an explorer and human rights activist before being a photographer. Born in 1954, he was 22 when Jorge Rafael Videla’s dictatorship started, forcing him to flee into exile to Barcelona. There, he became obsessed with gathering information which he pieced together in an attempt to solve the mysteries of those who went missing under the dictatorship (according to Videla this figure lies between 7,000 and 8,000 people, however Amnesty International and the United Nations claim it is closer to 30,000.) His main project, Buena Memoria, is an intricate, poignant and deeply emotive study of human suffering that revolves around a graduation photograph. The picture was taken at the Colegio Nacional in Buenos Aires in 1967 and led Brodsky into an intense investigation and reconstruction of his friends’ and his brother’s stories. His brother is still missing to this day.

7. Walter Astrada

Astrada is a photojournalist who started his career as a press photographer for La Nación in 1996 and has since worked for numerous press organizations, notably Associated Press and Presse France. He made a name for himself capturing some of the cruelest examples of violence occurring on the African continent. In gaining close proximity to conflict zones he was able to show the world the harsh suffering inflicted on innocent people. His photos tell the untold story of those who are persecuted so that this suffering does not go unnoticed and so that people take action. In drawing attention to unreported crimes, Astrada has been awarded with numerous prizes: World Press Photo Awards, Bayeux-Calvados Award for War Correspondents, NPPA-BOP’s Photojournalist of the Year and Best of Show, PGB’s Photographer of the Year and Pictures of the Year, Days Japan, Sony World photography Awards and Marty Forscher Fellowship Fund.

Some of his photos are shocking, others disturbing, but they help shed light on a reality we have a responsibility to grapple with.

8. Rodrigo Abd

Abd is also a photojournalist whose work has opened the eyes of many. He started his career working for La Razón and La Nación newspapers in Argentina before moving onto photographing for Associated Press in Bolivia during the 2003 crisis. He then went onto covering the Venezuelan presidential elections in 2007, the 2010 Haiti earthquake, Afghanistan in 2010, Libya in 2011 and the Syrian conflict in 2012; all of which have earned him many awards. This is his Instagram.

9. Irina Werning

Werning put together one of the best photographic series of the century: “Back To The Future”. Just google image her name and scroll through. It’s brilliant. On her website Werning admits that she is a nosey photographer: “As soon as I step into someone else’s house, I start sniffing for them. I like to imagine how people would feel and look like if they were to reenact them today.” Well, that’s exactly what she did on her journey to 32 countries by bringing people’s past memories to life.

While our list until now has remained contemporary, we are ending with a man who truly revolutionized Argentine photography, and despite passing away in 2012, his work is still very much alive.

10. Horacio Coppola

Coppola was a pioneer within the world of photography who captured almost the entire twentieth century. After studying at the Bauhaus in Berlin in 1932, he travelled throughout Europe and then returned to Buenos Aires, photographing his hometown into what would be one of the most romantic portrayals of the city as it shifted from its traditional form to modernity. His first glimpse of international success was when one of Argentina’s greats, Jorge Luis Borges, chose to use Coppola’s photographs for his biography of poet Evaristo Carriego. He died in 2012 at the age of 105.

This article originally appeared on The Bubble and is republished here with permission.