Sara Facio, photographer, editor of great photography books, curator and pioneer of photographic portraits, died last Tuesday in Buenos Aires, Argentina, at the age of 92.
Considered one of the best in her profession in the 20th century, Facio achieved international prominence thanks to her emblematic portraits of artists, writers, musicians, athletes and other cultural personalities in Argentina and Latin America, such as Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar, Ernesto Sabato, Astor Piazzolla, Pablo Neruda, Gabriel García Márquez, Alejo Carpentier, Mario Vargas Llosa, Octavio Paz, Doris Lessing, Federico Leloir and María Elena Walsh —who was his partner for many years—, among others.
She exhibited individually in museums and galleries throughout America, Europe and Asia and received awards and distinctions as a photographer and as an editor in Argentina and abroad, highlights the website www.letralia.com
His photographs are in the permanent collections of MoMA, the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid and in prestigious private collections.
We recommend you read: “We have done everything to destroy the jungle”: Margarita Serje
According to the Argentine newspaper Clarín, his first book, which is titled Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires (1968), made by Annemarie Heinrich and includes a text by Julio Cortázar. Facio’s portrait of the Argentine writer went around the world as iconic of that childish and carefree expression.
With Cortázar himself he also published Humanitarian (1977) and with the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda he edited Pablo Neruda Geography (1973).
The National Museum of Fine Arts highlights that he always worked for the recognition of photography as art. Over the years he specialized in social essays and graphic and written journalism, he collaborated in magazines and newspapers in Argentina (including Clarín and La Nación), America and Europe.
You may be interested in: The 16 pieces of pre-Columbian art that Colombia recovered: they were in Switzerland and New Zealand
In Clarín they report that in 1985 he created the San Martín Theater Photo Gallery, which he directed until 1998 and where he presented more than 160 exhibitions with his catalogs. He began to build his own library of photographers he admired.
“For this reason, beyond the 500 individual exhibitions and the presence of her work in collections of the most important museums and galleries in America, Europe and Asia or the more than twenty personal books published, we will remember Sara for bringing photography out of the spaces limited to experts to bring it closer to everyone and teach us to look.”
