Monday 4/29/2024
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450 meters from the obelisk, on Corrientes Avenue, the Teatro San Martín has a photo gallery. It is less a passage to Sarmiento Street than an elusive porch to another dimension, where the dense urban bustle is silenced. Those who stray there these days are observed in quiet intensity, from black and white photographic portraits.
There are 63 faces looking from one wall to another, identities mostly unknown or little less known to the mass audience. However, they have settled in the consciousness – in the imagery – of many Argentines. They are “contemporary photographers” whom, for once, Fredy Heer put on the other side of the lens.
Fredy left Esperanza -and a productive family business that offered him stability- in 1972; He did it driven by a passion that was born when his father – Fernando Paillet’s former laboratory worker – gave him a Kodak.
His profession had grown since 1964 until there, together with that of his friend Hugo Raina; The car races in Rafaela and the area, the rock of the ’60s on Berduc Island, were some of his excuses.
The espadrilles that he usually wears in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Palermo are testimony to an identity of origin that Fredy walked through the raucous nights of Mau Mau -reflected for years in the role of El Litoral- as well as through art salons, through the Casa Rosada and Congress, on the soccer fields.
Monzón, Susana, Moria, Olmedo, Diego, Charly, Sandro, Mirtha, Bichi Fuertes’ 100th goal, Reutemann’s “no” to Duhalde, the World Cup in France, De Niro, Depardieu, plastic artists, writers, works of art .
Larrea, Fredy and the exhibition poster, emblem of “Foptoheerholga” (on Facebook) where the cult of the plastic camera becomes art. Photo: Maximiliano Vernazza.
Important people or anonymous moments on the street passed through Fredy’s gaze. The man observes, composes, shoots. He draws vignettes, builds worlds, challenges spirits.
In Buenos Aires, Fredy photographed the work of Raúl Soldi and Benito Quinquela Martín, among other artists. He worked in the magazine El Expreso Imaginario and in the newspaper La Razón. He made portraits of Adolfo Bioy Casares, Olga Orozco, Abelardo Arias, Miguel Briante and José “Pepe” Bianco.
His first exhibition, at the Recoleta Cultural Center, was followed by another at the Arcimboldo Gallery, of images taken with a cell phone, when the devices barely had an elementary lens.
Less camera, more photo
Leica, Nikon, Rolleiflex, cell phones. Heer got rid of the devices to keep a Chinese camera, even plastic in the lens. “The photos with Holga turn out well, the secret is patience. It has only one speed, it’s wonderful. It’s so simple that it’s complicated.”
It seems like a paradox, it is a declaration of principles. Fredy chose to get rid of the camera, keep the photo: her gaze, measure the light, compose, shoot just once. Not much more.
With Gustavo, his grandson. Good love always lights up the scene. Photo: Maximiliano Vernazza.
“Two or three shots per portrait,” even when “the Holga photos don’t turn out well. The secret is patience; modern cameras take 20 photos per second; the Holga has only one speed,” he says.
Andy Goldstein – curator of the exhibition, friend – joined in editing the “portraits”, a job that took him two years.
Among his sitters are Sara Facio, Juan Travnik, Julie Weisz, Adriana Lestido, Alberto Goldenstein, Eduardo Grossman, Rafael Calviño, Fabián Laghi, Alfredo Srur, Julieta Escardó, Andy Goldstein, Esteban Pastorino, Marcos López from Santa Fe and Eduardo Longoni. Any incomplete list is unfair to everyone and the job.
“There are people who say that to make a good portrait you have to know the person. It’s a lie,” he says, “you need your eye and a camera. Nothing more.”
Fredy saves words as he perfects the shots of his photos, composed with art, care and wisdom. She measures the air from her lungs; It is scarce as there are few shots that she can do with an expensive and limited film.
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He suffers from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis; It is the magnitude of the obstacle that does not break his spirit, his passion. He moves on with the troubled love of Cecilia, his wife; from her children Tamara and Martín, from his grandson Gustavo. And friends who are countless.
The studio is part of his house, on the third floor of a period building on Scalabrini Ortiz Street, half a block from Santa Fe Avenue. It is a space surrounded by unique books of photographs – a beautiful library, like few in the country. and echoes of endearing conversations. The place is an inseparable part of Fredy.
“I photographed a total of 80 colleagues with the premise that all of them, in addition to taking good photos, had carried out some notable action outside of work, as a way of leaving a legacy. It is the gift I want to give to Argentine photography.”
From his wheelchair, Fredy doesn’t stop. She gives instructions, she asks to set up the tripod, she points flashes and measures the light from the window. She composes about the endless black, a bench, the character portrayed and nothing more.
His eye does not look like that of unwary mortals; he observes as the Holga lens does; He knows that the camera will return his rebellions, he is complicit in them. He works on his new project: couple portraits.
Among the prophets of absolute lights and infinite darkness, Fredy never stops eternalizing the contrasting moments that life gives. Whom she knows how to take.
