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© 2021 Ricardo Garcia Vilanova
Laura Leon / Tras los cristales
Texto Antonio Avendaño
‘Todos los confinamientos el confinamiento’. El encierro planetario por la covid-19 guardaría remotas semejanzas con el célebre cuento de Julio Cortázar ‘Todos el fuegos el fuego’, donde dos parejas problemáticas, cuyas vidas se cuentan al mismo tiempo pero transcurren con veinte siglos de distancia, mueren en sendos incendios que de algún modo son un único fuego, pues en cierto sentido todos los incendios son el mismo incendio.
“Me contagié de la covid-19 a principios de marzo. Lo supe por los síntomas, pero no podía confirmarlo porque no tenía acceso a un test. Me sucedió antes de que el Gobierno decretara el estado de alarma; durante las siguientes semanas tendría que vivir aislada, mi mundo material, mi espacio vital iban a encogerse como nunca pude imaginar”.
‘Tras los cristales’ explora ese súbito regreso a un útero materno que nunca tendría la calidez ni la certidumbre del verdadero, pero sí su extraño formato de clausura, de precinto, tal vez de tedio.
El planeta que Laura León había recorrido en su trabajo frecuentando países marcados por el estigma de la infelicidad iba a quedar reducido a su propia casa y a un par de calles. Toda la Tierra era su barrio y toda su población su familia, sus vecinos, sus perros, esos perros que a su manera debieron preguntarse, asombrados y felices, por qué de pronto nunca los dejaba solos, ¿ésta que nunca se va es la misma de siempre?
Con el confinamiento tomó, pues, posesión de la casa y del barrio de Laura Su Majestad El Miedo, el despiadado monarca al que tantas veces ella había visto gobernar los lejanos países cuyas gentes, cuyas casas, caminos, animales y paisajes devastados había fotografiado. El de ahora era un miedo de otra estirpe menos aterradora, pero seguía siendo miedo. Todos los miedos el miedo.
Tal vez por ello, cuando la enferma superó el contratiempo de su contagio, se decidió a retratar su recién estrenado planeta de una casa y dos calles. Sus vecinos, sus amigos eran y no eran los de siempre, estaban cerca pero lejos. Ellos dentro pero fuera, ella fuera pero dentro. El simple cristal de la ventana que los separaba de la lente de León mostraba escenas y personajes un tiempo familiares e irreconocibles. Todo cercano. Todo inquietante. Así opera la monarquía del miedo en las regiones poco habituadas a él.
La cámara tenía que ser invisible, debía retratarlos siendo sus vecinos y conocidos de toda la vida pero siendo, al mismo tiempo, la inmensa población confinada a la que ella nunca conocería.
Todos los nombres el nombre. Todas las vidas la vida. Todas la fotos la foto. La fotografía cuenta la verdad, pero, cuando ella misma es verdadera –conjetura Laura León– “nunca acabamos de saber del todo si cuenta la verdad del retratado o cuenta más bien la del retratista”.
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By Antonio Avendaño
“All lockdowns the lockdown.” The worldwide lockdown provoked by Covid-19 could have some resemblance to the famous tale written by Julio Cortázar, “All fires the fire,” ins which two troubled couples, whose lives are told simultaneously even though they lived twenty centuries apart, die in fires that are in some form the same fire, since in a certain way all fires are the same fire.
Laura León, the author of this photo essay about the worldwide pandemic, explains how the idea of the project came up:
I caught Covid-19 in early March. I knew that I had its symptoms, but I could not confirm it as I could not get tested. It happened to me before the government decreed a state of emergency. In the following weeks, I was forced to leave isolated, my material world, my living space would get reduced in a way that I could never have imagined.
‘Behind the window’ explores a strange return to the mother’s womb, which would never have the warmth and certainty of the real one, but would share its shape in terms of closure, seal and even possibly tedium.
The world that Laura León had discovered while working in different countries marked by the stigma of unhappiness would become reduced to that of her own home and just a couple of surrounding streets. All the world became her neighborhood, all its population became her family, her neighbors, her dogs, which, in their own way, seemed to be asking, stunned and happy, why she suddenly would never leave them alone. “This woman who never leaves is the same person as always?”
During the lockdown, His Majesty Lord of Fear took charge of Laura’s house and her neighborhood, this ruthless monarch whom she had seen so often rule over distant countries whose people, homes, paths, animals and devastated landscapes she had photographed. The fear, their fear was of a kind that was less frighte- ning, but it still remained fear.
That may explain why, when Laura overcame her infection problem, she decided to photograph her new planet containing just one house and two streets. Her neighbors and her friends were the same as always but at the same time also different, they were close and yet far away. They were inside but outside while she was outside but inside. The simple glass of her lens was showing scenes and people that were both familiar and unrecognizable. Every was near. Everything was worrying. That is how the kingdom of fear functions.
The camera had to remain invisible; it had to capture them as her longstanding neighbors and friends but at the same time as forming part of the huge population under lockdown that she would never get to know.
All the names the name. All the lives the life. All the photos the photo. The photo tells the truth but, although it is itself real, as Laura León mentions- ‘we never really get to know if it tells the truth of the person who is portrayed or that of the person who took the portrait’.
