Guillermo Srodek Hart
Stories

Guillermo Srodek-Hart - Town Barber from Stories

Guillermo Srodek -Hart’s documentary project, Stories, seeks to record and preserve. The artist is from a ranching family and has always been attached to the land. Place carries a legacy and history we add to it every time we work with it. We used to be connected with these sensibilities more than we are today; “progress” and convenience have proven alluring entrapments.

Guillermo Srodek-Hart wanders into the Argentinian countryside like a man on a quest, seeking the remains and refuges of independent rural life. To create his vestiges of evidence, Srodek-Hart uses an eye that is also going “extinct:” a large-format film camera complete with bellows, black drape, and tripod. His photographs feel to exist outside of time, or at least modernity. Machines work by hand, coolers by block-ice if at all, store-walls feel like totems of time, bearing marks and personal memorials. These works are familiar, comforting, even emboldened by a simplicity that feels today heroic.

The photograph shown above of a barber shop appeared in a monograph also titled Stories. In the book published by Prestel, Guillermo Srodek-Hart adds text to the places he has photographed. These passages act as field-notes, adding personality, depth, and context to the work. Plate description follows:

Alberto Ponce told me that he started off as a kid helping out in a big barbershop. There, he would clean the gentleman’s hats for tips. Back then people used to get a shave every three or four days, so it was very busy all the time. He keeps a small number of regulars who don’t complain and he will not charge them if they can’t pay. He says that at this point in his life, it’s more a matter of keeping busy and entertained.

Rauch, Buenos Aires Provence | Watch- a video with the Patron of this shop.

Guillermo Srodek-Hart

Town Barber, 2013

Stories by Guillermo Srodek-Hart | Price Structure:
20 x 25 in. archival pigment print | edition of 7 | $1,800
30 x 38 in. archival pigment print |edition of 5 | $4,500
40 x 48 in. archival pigment print |edition of 5 | $6,000