The tensions and silences of domestic

comfort

Juanele interviews Sebastián Friedman

Juanele continues his coverage of Arte x Arte’s invaluable retrospective,
Fotografía en la Argentina 1840- 2010. At this Palermo gallery, Juanele had the
chance to talk with Sebastián Friedman, one of the contemporary photographers
featured at the show.

Social classes fascinate Friedman and he approaches this topic from different
perspectives. His work, Familia y doméstica (The Family and The Maid) consists
of diptychs - groups of two different family portraits mounted in the familiar
frames displayed in many living rooms in Argentina. In the photos, peoplea are
arranged harmoniously and look directly into the camera. Their faces maintain a
neutrality of expression. Sebastián decided to include the parents, the children
and also, the maid. Afterward, he photographed the maid with her own family
in her own home environment, and with the same photographic conventions.

In this apparently simple counterpoint, it’s possible to observe contrasts of social

class and identity, but the photos remain silent about mutual dependencies and
tensions of power, exchange and coexistence. They show cultural differences,
but never explain them. Pictures seem conscious of their limits, aware that it’s
within the silences and ambiguities that the observer’s personal feelings will
surface. Will you find them ironic, tender, perverse, funny or terrible?
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Gabriela Schevach: How do you see your work in the context of the Fotografa en Argentina
exhibit?

Sebastin Friedman: I think it somehow talks of an era, a time that has rapidly changed.
And, I think without being conscious, the middle class is always trying re-adjust itself,
which involves readjusting its notion of comfort.

The Argentine middle class is very comfortable and there are lots of things that it doesn’t
like doing. So for those, they hire someone else. This involves gender-related matters,
like the woman who leaves the home and needs other women to cover the empty spaces.
Argentine society is also very sexist, so it’s not the man of the family who is the person
who replaces the woman.

So this is related to a particular moment, that has somehow, afterward, changed due to
the 2001 crisis. Many (middle class) families had to give up certain questions of comfort,
like having a maid living at the house. Now, in a certain way, in this moment of supposed
constant growth in the country, the middle class adjusts again and takes a position. Things
go back to their place. In that sense, I think it talks about the history, a moment and a
historical habit. And you could think of their ways of fitting this work in the exhibition, but
there is always a little bit of arbitrariness why this work is included and not others?

GS: For me there’s also something in the form that you chose to display the photographs,
a little bit ironic, that produces a dialogue with the way families exhibit their snapshots,
only this time you are including a person who lives with the family without belonging to it.

SF: In that sense, when people say she “almost belongs to the family," the recurring
leitmotiv, then it’s really clear. The “Almost" expresses the fragility of the bonds.

The form of display has to do with my concern, which I try to keep present in all my works,
that consists not just in shooting a picture, good or bad, frame it with a square rod, a sheet
of glass over it, the passe-partout, fix it to the wall, wash my hands and go home. I tend to
get bored by the unification of forms in the art world, which doesn’t happen all the time,
but in photography it’s quite normal that the exhibits have some kind of uniformity. Also
the ways to mount pictures. Suddenly plexiglas becomes trendy and everybody’s using it.
And suddenly everyone makes giant prints. I also question the white wall and those vices
of the art world - mildly, though. What I suggest isn’t a crazy thing.

But the choice of display has to do with the topic. It’s not just a way of breaking with a

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traditional form of display, but with going even further. In this case, the family, the small
frame that could stand in a family home and on the shelf, which could also be there. Yes, I
like redundancy in order to talk more.

GS: Yes, to intensify your discursive idea.

SF: Yes, to fix my position in the making as well as in the showing of the picture.

GS: I have the impression I see irony here...

SF: I’m interested in irony. In general, though, I link it with artifice, so in this work it’s
less present in that sense. I believe the subject matter I chose has an ironic charge in
itself. The irony belongs to the topic; it’s above my position. Because, actually, I chose an
almost aseptic thing: frontal portraiture with characters looking into the camera, a formal
organization that favors a fluid reading of the image, visually attractive and faces presenting
a neutrality of expression. All that, at a certain point, was a decision. That enables the
observer to connect in a deeper way with the things that belong to his or her own history
and that meddle in each image. So, you see it as ironic, someone else could view it as
perverse, another one thinks it’s funny or terrible. All those readings have happened many
times. I receive varied comments and that has to do with having had a maid or if you went
to a friend’s house and the maid was there and so on.

GS: Perhaps, more than irony, it’s a kind of uncomfortable feeling because the device is
socially associated with pictures where family relations are a lot clearer; so that makes
you expect something, but looking closely, you find something else, slightly different.

SF: It’s also related to the idea of going back to the ritual of the family portrait and adding
this character that we don’t know whether, yes or no. At the same time, the gesture of
photographing the maid with her own family is very much present. She knows everything
about the world and the private life of her employers, while they know next to nothing
about her universe. The idea consisted also in giving visibility to that world, make them
know her house, who her family is, where she lives. It’s also like a gesture of justice.

GS: Are you always interested in the uncomfortable coexistence of social classes?

SF: There is always in my work a concern about social matters. I’m very interested in the
middle class. I’m middle class. I’ve been raised like that and I have all the vices of a middle
class person, with all the contradictions. I consider myself a guy with a recognizable social

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consciousness; but, at the same time, I tend to make a lot of things invisible. Because,
actually, I could have chosen activism. This is my form of activism, a bit more confortable
than involving myself in a direct struggle.

From this position I am talking of my own contradictions, my own interests, the things
that make me uncomfortable, what I believe to be unfair, or what I think is possible to
see. It’s about looking at something and pointing it out: “Look, here is something. Think
about it." I don’t indicate whether it’s good or bad. I’ve learnt that from the work, which
originally came out of a deep anger with a situation that distressed me, generating anger
and discomfort. At the end, it enabled me to understand that there are clear situations
of great injustice here. But there is also a percentage of responsibility at each side. There
isn’t a victim and an exploiter. There is a kind of specific relationship where certain matters
become very valuable and others are very unfair. So, let’s reflect on this, let’s try to improve
this situation.

GS: At the same time, the pictures don’t show a morally assumed position in respect to
good and evil.

SF: No, that’s not in the pictures. There isn’t a second intention, everything is present, it’s
there, draw your own conclusion. You have a topic, characters, two universes somehow
linked. I was very interested in this hinged frame because, for me, the maid represents the
hinge between those two universes. She’s a hinge-character. She has those two family-
universes, in which she’s emotionally very much involved.

GS: In the context of the exhibition, do you feel there is a continuity between what you can
see as the classical domestic photography of the 19th Century and what you do?

SF: In the formal theme of the classical portrait, yes. There is a correlate because there
is a transposition of a way of photographing in that era and now, too. There are many
photographers who work in that way. My work keeps the domestic universe, but transposed
in time. That would be the most direct reading.

GS: Is there a photographer in the show or outside of it that has specifically influenced you?

SF: In this show there are many pieces by Marcos López. I have worked a great deal with
him during my training period. I consider him a clear influence. For me, he is one of my
masters, beyond the fact that his forms are completely different than mine. His way of
dealing and working with reality is completely different, but I feel an influence.

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Fotografía en la Argentina 1840 - 2010
Through November 26th

Arte x Arte
Lavalleja 1062, Buenos Aires, Argentina
www.galeriaartexarte.com
Monday - Friday, 1 - 8 pm
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