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GUADALUPE MILESRodrigo Alonso

Published in: Quince x Quince. Photographers xCritics (catalogue). Buenos Aires: PraxisFoundation. 2005.

After eight years of work, Guadalupe Milesstarted to show the first images from her series,Chaco. In them she portrays a group of inhabi-tants of the chaco salteno (the tropical forest areaof Salta province) belonging to the Wich com-munity, one of many indigenous peoples of ourcountry who have been relegated to oblivion,indifference, and invisibility.The photographs that make up the series standout for the powerful dialectic play of glances. Incontrast to the traditional anthropological print,

here we don't find the cold, distanced observa-tion of self-described scientific objectivity - themore violent, invasive and piercing the less itattempts to become involved with its "object ofstudy". On the contrary, Miles' photographs un-derscore the subjectivity of her take, but also -most especially - the visual contract previouslyestablished with those she portrays.Her images are not wrenched from her models,but built on the basis of their concessions. In thisway, the Wichs cease to be entities being lookedat to become individuals that allow themselves be

seen, in their place and context, bathed by thesun or submerged in mud or water, facing thecamera or lending themselves to a visual playover which they always retain a strong measureof control. It's a game that allows them to be-come visible, with a reality and a body, in a radi-cally new, even defiant way.The artist, for her part, develops her gaze pierc-ing through canons of beauty and sensuality.Bordering - yet, at the same time, subverting -the guidelines of advertising photography, sheextracts from the faces, the poses and the situa-tions images that are quite unlike the usual rep-

resentations of such people. Everything aboutthem is beauty, joy, and vitality. A vitality that'sinfrequent in urban portraiture, a vitality thatadvertising only achieves through long hours ofmakeup.The contact with nature is something more thanan obvious input. It is, first and foremost, asource of energy that strikes the chaco saltenowith its presence, but which - at the same time,through its absence - strikes the urban environ-ment of the observer. The latter is, in the end, themain intended audience for the images. Upon

him this enigmatic and fascinating universe un-folds; removed, yet not alien, inhabited by un-known beings redolent with seduction and sen-suality.

Guadalupe Miles. Untitled (from the series Chaco). 1999.