2023-10-12 03:01:00
In honor of our 40 years of democracy, Bob Ahern, the Archives Director of Getty Images, the visual content creation company, chose some of what it considers key images of our history. That selection between the recovery of democracy and the unanimous celebrations of December 2022, when the Scaloneta gave Argentina its third World Cup, in Qatar, sparked a journey towards the roots and growth of the record of photographic images.
In four decades our reality changed, but the photographic record of reality also evolved. In any case, “human emotion and the skill of a photographer are timeless,” he highlighted as a common denominator.
And that’s how it always was. From the first photographic image in history, View from the window at Le Gras (1826), which required the French scientist Joseph Nicéphore Niépce to have eight hours of exposure in broad daylight for the image to be recorded in his camera obscura, until today’s digital composition, the work of the photojournalist took several 360 turns. degrees.
However, in any of its technical facets, journalistic photography never lost three ontological qualities: testimonial value, the creativity and the certainty of having in your hands a powerful tool.
Argentina, democracy and the looking machine
When in 1839, the French state appropriated the daguerreotype that Louis Daguerre presented to society at the Paris Academy of Sciences, improving Niepce’s invention with “the magic” of silver nitrate, it became clear that Voltaire’s nation had glimpsed before than anyone the political power and unimaginable scope that “the mechanical production of images” would bring with it.
Niépce’s nephew and Daguerre were left with glory and a lifetime pension while the French Ministry of Public Instruction began to feel like master of the world, while sending “photographic missions” to the most remote corners of the planet to create a “universal encyclopedia of nature, arts and industry.” “The world is ours and we are going to show it to them,” would be the latent message.
In 1888, with National Geographic Society that French monopoly was coming to an end; It was like saying “the world is ours too, let’s explore it and show it.”
And indeed the magazine that was born as a product of science displayed before the astonished eyes of the West what Tibet was like in 1900, China under the communist regime, the socialist republics on the other side of the Iron Curtain, the civilizations that believed themselves to be extinct and they even took with them the latest records of countless geographies in danger. Simply because the reporters were there to record it with their photographic lenses.
The Argentine social contract and its projection in the world
“From the 1960s to the early 21st century, the advancement of satellite technology brought greater efficiency and confidence in sending photos around the world,” says Bob Ahern, Director of Archives at Getty Images.
Images, Argentina in the world
“However, despite all the technological advances, the new processes might be unreliable and require the photographer to be simultaneously a reporter, technician, messenger and more,” says Ahern.
“Every time we went out to do a breaking news story for UPI (United Press International), I brought with me a mobile darkroom, a mobile fax machine… we developed the film in a bathroom, made a copy, placed a foot of photo in the copy and we put it on the drum, we connected it to a telephone and waited for a telephone operator to answer…. Everything was done with a high degree of difficulty…”, David details in the late sixties Hume Kennerly, Pulitzer-winning photographer and Getty Images contributor.
Over the years, advances came that allowed photographs to be transmitted over long distances for the first time and, more quickly, connect the public with world events in a way never seen before.
An image captures the followingmath of the attack on the AMIA headquarters on July 18, 1994. That day, 85 people died in Buenos Aires and more than 300 were injured. The rest of the world might see them a few minutes later. This is an example of the impact that technology had on photographic documentation of historical events.
If this had happened today, social media would be filled with verified and unverified videos, still images, and eyewitness accounts from multiple points of view.
“This, far from displacing the role of the photojournalist to the background, exalted it because editorial photographers have to be more responsible than ever when it comes to respecting the best photojournalistic practices, where technical innovations allow us to reimagine our points of view.” and acquire new knowledge, explains Bob Ahern, Director of Archives at Getty Images.
2001, odyssey of cacerolazos
He December 10, 1999the Alliance of the Radical Civic Union and Frepaso led the Casa Rosada to the Fernando de la Rúa-Carlos “Chacho” Alvarez formula, which ended the deanery of Carlos Menem, obtaining 48.37% of votes, surpassing Eduardo Duhalde and Ramón “Palito” Ortega (37.9%).
During his “administration” a new linguistic sign was born: “The playpen.”
The Minister of Economy, Domingo Cavallo limited the withdrawal of cash from the banks, to build a dam once morest the flight of deposits from Argentines, a scam of US$ 7,000 million and a measure that only exploded the population who launched massive protests into the streets. The disaster was inevitable and everything went haywire.
On December 19, 2001, Ricardo Ceppi’s camera recorded the out-of-tune concert of citizens banging pots and pans once morest the De la Rúa administration. That same day, 7 people died in supermarket looting. At night, President Fernando De la Rúa declared the Site status across the country in an attempt to stop the protests.
The next day, December 20, 2001, thousands of televisions reproduced the image of the president From the Street while announcing economic measures that satisfied no one, as demonstrated by the lost look of the passer-by recorded by Rafael Wollmann/Gamma-Rapho’s camera for Getty Images.
The next day, Aníbal Greco from a helicopter painfully lifted flight from the terrace of the Casa Rosada came to mean only one thing: the abrupt, perhaps undesirable, end of a resounding political-economic collapse in the country. And what followed was the tragicomic strip of 4 presidents in just 11 days, an unprecedented record in Argentina. Ramón Puerta, Adolfo Rodríguez Saá, Eduardo Camaño and Eduardo Duhalde.
“Some photographs over the years can take on archetypal qualities, and this is one case. The disappearance of long-serving presidents and prime ministers can be quick or prolonged, but sometimes a photograph is enough to go down in the history books, as was the case of President Ferando De la Rúa,” summarizes Ahern.
“One of the biggest changes in image recording was, of course, the arrival of the digital photography, and at the beginning of the 21st century, unprecedented changes occurred in the means of photo production and distribution. The volume of images taken and the speed with which they went around the world increased dramatically,” he said.
To give us an idea of such a volume of graphic material, the Getty Images website counts 15 million photos only for the last 12 months. They document news, sports, political events, entertainment.
“If we compare this figure with the more than 130 million analog images “From our physical archives, which represent more than two centuries of global history, we will realize the astonishing implications of this scale and, of course, the challenge of organizing, conserving and preserving our digital visual history for the future,” explains the Getty executive.
Argentines in images
For more than 40 years, we Argentinians got used to surfing between “this is a shitty country” and “tell me what it feels like”, and at that low tide we learned to breathe out of the water; and inside too.
always living at the edge of the abyss, but never ending the fall, vertigo punctuates the 24 hours of news of our entire life history, from the cradle to the grave. What is a certainty today, tomorrow will be replaced by another and today’s tears will be tomorrow’s smiles.
Like the cicada, we emerged from the worst tragedies and in these last 40 turbulent years there was no shortage of them. If we had to choose that one day when we all took communion in a bath of hope, that was the day. December 10, 1983 when, in the Casa Rosada, Raúl Alfonsín received the presidential sash from de facto president Reynaldo Bignone. “We are loaded with ideals and dreams that we are going to realize in an honest and reasonable manner,” he said, among many other things, in his inauguration speech; We all feel like we are rising a little from the mud.
In 40 years tears were not scarce either. And plethoric, those of November 25, 2020, when, ignoring the pandemic, an entire town embraced themselves in rivers of tears and consternation to say goodbye to their greatest idol, Diego Armando Maradona.
That pain brought us together once more. From hundreds of cities around the world we received torrents of compassion for the loss of “the hand of God”, who in a few hours had already been beatified by his believers. This was demonstrated by the Neapolitan graffiti that dedicated candles, flowers, altars and crowns to him, immortalized in images by Roberta Basile (KONTROLAB/LightRocket via Getty Images).
Argentina, small from drones
With the drones that record images in the air, we received incredible points of view to observe crowds gathered to protest, demonstrate or commune in their faith. The drone gave us the awareness of human smallness.
Los December 20th They are special days in Argentina, but 2022, he some. This is recorded by the happiness of the Argentines gathered in crowds to cheer the national team that arrived in the country following winning in Qatar FIFA World Cup. Marcelo Endelli’s camera recorded a fiery swarm that exceeded 5 million euphoric people singing from the heart, next to the Obelisk bonfire. And then, another shot of the human river along the immense Avenida 9 de Julio.
And so these 40 years passed, applauding pilots who landed and tying up as much as we might with wire, between the “¡cooorrecto!” by Susana Giménez and the country that we will leave to Mirtha Legrand. Four decades that have passed us by, but the great truths incredibly they flowed and still remain:
“Without the awareness of national unity, the consolidation of democracy will be impossible; Without solidarity, democracy will lose its true content. This flame must light in the heart of each citizen, who must feel called to acts of love rather than to the exercise of resentments. There will be freedom in Argentina, and there will also be order,” Raúl Alfonsín invited him on December 10, 1983.
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