Esteban Pastorino has developed an acclaimed career as a photographer, to which he adds research projects on the medium of photography, camera systems and visual effects.

On this occasion, he installs two visual devices on the terrace of Fundación Proa: a stereoscope and a periscope made of brass, both referring to marine artifacts.

These works change the landscape of the surrounding neighborhood of La Boca through a system of internal mirrors and lenses:

The stereoscope produces a three dimensional effect, while the periscope shows the landscape as if it were a miniature model.

The terrace thus becomes a viewpoint from the most representative corner in the neighborhood, establishing a dialogue between the institution and all that surrounds it.

An attempt, charged with at least some nostalgia, to symbolically reinstate the vantage point from La Boca’s old, now-defunct bridge


The Artist and his works

Stereoscope, 2009
Brass, steel, wood and mirrors
200 x 70 x 100 cm

Periscope, 2009
Brass, steel, wood, mirrors and lenses
240 x 70 x 100 cm

Esteban Pastorino was born in Buenos Aires in 1972.

He studied advertising photography at the Academy Fotodesign (Buenos Aires). He was later selected as artist-in-residence for the Photographic Center of Skopelos (Greece), the Rijksakademie Van Beeldende Kunsten (Netherlands), the Casa de Velázquez (Spain) and the Fiskars Artist Residency (Finland).

Over the course of his career he has received numerous distinctions, including the Leonardo Award for Photography (National Museum of Fine Arts) and the Abraham Haber Award for Photographer of the Year (Argentina Association of Art Critics).

In Buenos Aires, he has exhibited his works individually in ICI, the San Martín Theater Photo gallery, MAMBA, C.C. Rojas, and the Dabbah Torrejón Gallery. He has also exhibited his works in Belgium, Spain, the United Kingdom, France, USA, Holland and Mexico.

"In my opinion, what’s most striking about this collection of Esteban Pastorino’s photographs is not the subversion of reality, which he activates by intervening in the focal plane of the lens, but rather that this manipulation of a feature of a camera is capable, for example, of taking us back to childhood; it doesn’t just mutate the natural and urban landscapes into models, but is also capable of converting all the elements of the image into pieces of the universes we constructed in our childhood games. And to play in this way submerges us in a direct relationship with fantasy, with magic; it is a voluntary disconnection from rationality, an emancipation that allows man to interact with reality in a different way. And that ability coincides with one of the essential qualities of modern art, which separated itself in this manner from the classical theory of the Greek philosophers, who defined art as an imitation of reality. An idea that is in some way paralyzing, and which also affected the definition of the essence of photography since its invention, given the highly technical nature of its operations and the scientific and documentary applications ascribed to it in its early years. The advent of photography was one of the causes of painting’s crisis, as it achieved its classic goal with greater efficiency and less cost. But photography didn’t just contribute to painting’s crisis; it also facilitated its emancipation.

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Esteban Pastorino’s visual paradoxes are the result of his fascination with building devices capable of provoking in the spectator an illusion of the senses. In a way, it develops a ritual with magical undertones linking it with photography’s passionate pioneers from the nineteenth century, particularly those that focused on the genesis of devices able to stop movement, extend the visual field or simulate three-dimensionality. Arthur Batut and Eadweard Muybridge are two referents of this group. Batut developed in 1890 a device capable of taking aerial photographs from a kite, which, thanks to the device’s versatility, widened the potential uses of the zenith shots that had already been obtained by Nadar in 1858 from a static hot air balloon. Muybridge became famous for his panoramas and his chronophotography, which broke down and froze the movement of people and animals. His research to simulate the animation of images led him to invent the zoopraxiscope, which many consider the precursor to the film projector. The nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were rich in experiments of this complexion, which often had great sounding boards in the Universal Exhibitions, where the audience watched, fascinated by these strangely-named inventions: zoetropes, phenakistoscopes, kinoras, kinetoscopes, folioscopes, dioramas or stereoscopic cameras and viewfinders. In some cases, these devices had scientific applications; in others it was simply entertaining to witness viewpoints or perceptions of reality that were otherwise inaccessible to the human eye."

Technical fiction. By John Valentini. PHOTO SPAIN 2008. Exhibition catalog

"Oftentimes photographers choose the camera according to the image they seek to obtain. What is distinctive, in Esteban’s case, is that he establishes the image’s ground playing rules, but it is not he, but rather his camera, who plays. Or, put another way, one of Esteban’s main tasks is to transform the camera (along with the developing and copy processes) into the imperceptible protagonist of the image.

His photos, then, turn on the problematic of photographic objectivity, but in the sense that they connect with the world, highlighting the technical elements of photography, or photography explored in its voluptuousness technicalities. This is also how the photographer "technifies" himself: ceasing to control, in large part, what is on the other side of the viewfinder, delegating that task to the internal laws of the apparatus. As if the photographer  and camera were to strike up a conversation (in some cases even an argument). As if the photographer were to say to the camera: I’ll leave you alone (for example, off the coast of the Uruguayan resort town of Piriápolis, or mounted on a kite flying in Ciudad Universitaria in Buenos Aires), to see what you're capable of doing on your own. It is not, then, about objectivity as a sort of will to document, nor about a faith in the historical truth of the photographic object, but rather a distancing from the photographer's eye, a handing over of dominion to the material and the technical processes. It is, in short, a game of linguistics.

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