RIVER

Canals, roads that end in isolated houses, paths interrupted by abandoned cars, forgotten vineyards and collapsed buildings follow one another along the southern coast of the Río de la Plata.

The vegetation occupies the spaces and embraces the objects. It makes them a definitive part of the place and at the same time makes them disappear.

Who ever dug these furrows? Where did that ladder used to lead? Where does the root end and the cement begin?

The pictures that hold this work were taken in Berazategui, Hudson, Punta Lara, Ensenada and Berisso during 2011 and 2013.

River. Photographs by Martín Estol

Exhibition at the National Library 2014

Martín Estol's photographs speak of a special state of nature. It is when it becomes the neighbor of the fall out due to the action of time of the objects that surrounded it. The photographic eye is implacable with time because it defies its troubled mistakes. We stand in front of a true photograph when time has gone by or it is about to happen. Here is when we can perceive the length of time. Small abandoned shelters, an upside down boat, a loose horse. The river is an interested witness for it is acting in its magnificent choreography of an apparent passivity, but for the photographic art, this passivity tells us with its lights and wrinkled areas that we don't know if they are calm bays of water or the indifferent piled up garbage that keeps on going in a an intriguing procession. There are no human beings here. The photographer tells us the human side, which is possessed by the chiaroscuro of a hidden conscience, is the river.

Horacio González
Director of the National Library