About Guillermo Srodek-Hart

Like a man on a pilgrimage, contemporary art photographer Guillermo Srodek-Hart seeks overlooked places that are just beyond access to most but familial to some. His quest takes him to the countryside of his homeland, Argentina. Srodek-Hart wanders past the borders he knows for the joy of discovery. Beyond the thrill of these “finds” is a dedication the preservation of place, its history, and spirit.

When he journeys, he asks those he meets for places that the people go- places rural and often hidden away if not entirely forgotten. In Stories he brings back images of bars, barbers shops, pharmacies, dry cleaners, workbenches and repair stores, butcher shops, bakeries, and country stores as well as interiors, roadside shrines, and in-home altars. The places in Srodek-Hart’s photographs appear to exist outside of time and all are united by their aura and energy. They are archaic, self-sufficient, but ultimately doomed; “progress” has proven both invasive and alluring.

We engage his photographs first out of fascination and linger in them for the same reason. These are rustic and worn, but beautiful places, for they are free of the shinny trappings of contemporary consumer-hungry culture. Machines work by hand, coolers by ice-block if at all; store offerings seem elaborately eclectic and otherwise random. As we watch perishables perish we know the images’ contents can even mirror their own fate, so it is the photograph that will keep them eternal. The images are emboldened by their simplicity. Their very ethic makes them heroic. A sense of poetry is further folded into the prints: Srodek-Hart uses a large format camera to make the works. Complete with billows, black drape, and tripod, it renders even the camera’s eye historic fine art.

Stories

Srodek-Hart’s photography captures more than disappearing places but part of a free human spirit that lingers in them. Man’s mark echoes in the wear-pattern of the floorboards and paint-chipped walls; organized and disheveled work-spaces; sparsely adorned and over-saturated but impressively organized counters, cases, and shop windows. We can almost see the invisible hand moving behind these spaces, maintaining or patronizing them. When we do find figures they tend to be white-haired, and we know that neither the patron nor the shop will be long in this world. Srodek-Hart wanders further with each journey to bring back these stories while he can. Though the places Srodek-Hart photographs may become submerged in the tide of progress at least these images will endure the wake.

Rural Installations

Rural Installations are uncanny, loaded, and magical photographs haunted by a sense of presence. They explore history and tension in decay, but also the memory that lingers until giving way to what was before. These works tug on many threads of consciousness. We may consider the histories of those who occupied these places, the personal and collective aspirations embedded into the unique or type-structures, the passage of time, or the conquest of nature over the man-made.

These photographs of abandoned architecture in states of decay are made in far-flung corners of the Argentinian countryside. Srodek-Hart’s photographs engage our curiosity and reward careful looking.  The subject of these vistas are a triad of related subjects- grain elevators, estates, and gas stations.

They were made using old and new methodologies.  To find these places Srodek-Hart used word of mouth and satellite images. So too with image-capture:  the resulting work was made with an even mix of a 4x5 and drone cameras.  The former is more true to the artist’s traditional practice, and the latter an adaptation that allowed exploration of inaccessible spaces. The ethereal qualities of the 4x5 is heightened by the aerial vantage of the drone camera.  Together the dialog of vignettes and elongation translates as intangibility. These strategies add an uneasy dynamism- space pulls around us like a cloak that anchors us, yet we have the sensation of floating. These places speak to the way new horizons invite manifest destiny as much as they dress the cold reality desire doesn’t always lead to fulfillment.

Contemporary artist Guillermo Srodek-Hart earned his BFA from Tufts University and MFA from Mass College of Art.  His work has exhibited internationally, most notably in the 55th Venice Biennale.  His work is in the permanent collections of the Attleboro Museum of Art, Bruce Berman Collection, Danforth Museum of Art, Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts, Fundación Klemm, Fundación Petrobrás, Larriviére Collection, North Dakota Museum of Art, and Santa Barbara Museum of Art, among others.