Julio Cortázar—Visible Invisible

Photographic essay by Antonio Fernández

Antonio Fernández

The fantastic stories of Argentine writer Julio Cortázar (1914–1984) secured him a place in world literature. He was also keenly interested in photography. His story Las babas del diablo (Blow-Up), which served as the basis for Michelangelo Antonioni’s Film Blow Up, addresses the strange experience of a photographer friend: a photograph that only begins to reveal what it really recorded as it’s being developed in the darkroom. The seemingly invisible becomes visible, the boundaries of reality and fiction are blurred. Inspired by Cortázar’s story, the Argentinean photographer Antonio Fernández inquires into the possibilities of transposing this literature into photography. He, too, rewrites, corrects, and distorts his photomontages to create surprising, seemingly surreal scenes of motifs from the actual Paris locations the author lived and spent time in, augmented by theater photographs from Buenos Aires. Fernández installs his work in two friezes that wrap around the room; in the institute’s reading room, visitors can “read” and decipher them, much like a story.