The photographic legacy of Adriana Lestido: from darkness to light

“It all started in 1979. I was studying film with Rodolfo Hermida at the Avellaneda Film School. I took a photography course because I had no idea, and I felt it would be useful for film. And that's when I completely fell in love with photography. It appeared in my dreams. It was very intense, total love,” says photographer Adriana Lestido about her beginnings. This Saturday, at 8 p.m., and on Saturdays July 12, 19, and 26, the Malba Film Festival will feature Yo y la que fui (I and the One I Was), a documentary about her life and work by Constanza Niscovolos , also a photographer (for Clarín , among others), a student and friend of Lestido’s . It will also be shown at CineArte Cacodelphia.

“The following year, I quit filmmaking and began studying photography. Much later, I realized the close connection between the discovery of photography as my expressive medium and the death of my partner, Willy Moralli, who had been there the year before, in 1978. Those were very dark times, and perhaps that's why I embraced photography, the medium of light, so strongly, as if to ward off so much darkness,” Lestido tells Ñ Magazine .

Adriana Lestido was born in Buenos Aires in 1955. In 1973, she began studying engineering and military service in the Vanguardia Comunista party, where she met Willy Moralli, whom she married a year later. In 1978, her husband was kidnapped and disappeared.

In 1979, Adriana began studying film and photography at the Avellaneda School of Film and Audiovisual Techniques. Between 1982 and 1995, she worked as a photojournalist for La Voz , Página/12 , and the Diarios y Noticias Agency . She was the first Argentine photographer to receive the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Hasselbad Fellowship, and the Mother Jones Award.

She was also named Outstanding Cultural Personality by the Buenos Aires Legislature, received the Bicentennial Medal, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Argentine Association of Art Critics, the Leonardo Award from the National Museum of Fine Arts, the Grand Acquisition Prize at the National Visual Arts Salon, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Fine Arts, and the Platinum Konex Award, among other distinctions.

Constanza Niscovolos 's documentary explores Lestido's life and her passion for photography: her series about mothers and daughters, her constant desire to observe, her enjoyment of her home by the sea with friends, including writers Juan Forn and Guillermo Saccomanno . "As (Czech photographer Josef) Koudelka once said, a good photograph is a miracle. And miracles are not made or provoked by anyone; they are discovered. They have to do with perception, not with concepts or emotions—although I believe that all genuine expression impacts a person's emotions above all else, touching their soul and making them receptive to what is good. The miracle lies in the fact that a powerful image simply is; it transcends time. It is pure consciousness because it is present," Lestido believes.

The photo he took in 1982 in Plaza de Mayo of a mother holding her small daughter, demanding the return of those detained and disappeared during the last military dictatorship, remains fresh in our collective memory. His film Errante , produced by Lita Stantic and Maravilla Cine, is also a favorite.

Niscovolos, director of Me and the One I Was , met Lestido at 19 when she enrolled in a photography workshop with her, at the recommendation of her mother. “The idea for the film came about when she published the book Lo que se ve, which is a retrospective of her photos from an exhibition in Recoleta in 2008. Looking at the book, I said to myself, 'I want to make a documentary about her.' And I started at the end of 2017,” she says. “What I learned from Adriana was, on the one hand, the respect she has for her own desires, her decisions, for herself, and then her willpower: she has a willpower I don't see in anyone else. That's her essence,” says Niscovolos.

What is Seen captures Lestido's work in 152 photographs, spanning more than 30 years: female prisoners, teenage mothers, childhoods in a children's hospital, and her home by the sea are all seen in the photos stitched onto paper, accompanied by words from Sara Gallardo, John Berger, Alejandra Pizarnik, Clarice Lispector, Carl Jung, Raymond Carver, and Pedro Salinas. Plus two final texts by Marta Dillon and María de los Ángeles González on beauty, hope, and the depth of her aesthetic.

A photographer telling the story of another photographer—that's Me and What I Was . “With photography, I can be there and observe, and that's a gift; it's what I love most in the world, and it's where my family, my friends, and my connections are built. The camera gives you that passport to be able to look beyond everything we go through every day as workers,” Niscovolos explains.

During the audiovisual presentation, which also shows Lestido traveling to the beach and the south of the country, blessing her works with incense and venerating Pachamama, the photographer says she wants to be a lifelong learner, to break away from the static place of consecration: “As long as you're alive, you're always learning. It's a vital condition for continuing to evolve as a human being. Right now, I'm working on film and writing; they're my new avenues of expression. But learning goes far beyond the medium of expression. It's about being alive.”

*The documentary Me and the One I Was will be shown on Saturdays in July at 8 p.m. at Malba Cine, Figueroa Alcorta 3415, and on Sundays, July 6 and 13 at 5 p.m. at CineArte Cacodelphia, Roque Sáenz Peña 1150.