Alfredo Jaar Quotes

I remember her eyes. The eyes of Gutete Emerita.

I think I’m a journalist in one sense – I want to communicate to people about certain things that are happening around us, around the world, close or far. In order to transform this information into art you have to add poetry. It’s essential.

Our society is blind. We have lost our ability to be affected by imagery.

I am suspicious and disillusioned about the uses and misuses of photography in the art world, the press, and the world of entertainment. And to make things more complicated, I don’t think that the general public is well educated regarding images. Generally we are taught how to read, but we are not taught how to look.

Journalistic information and presentation actually discourage action… we think we know, and because we think we know, we think we care. But it stops there.

For me, what was important was to record everything I saw around me, and to do this as methodically as possible. In these circumstances a good photograph is a picture that comes as close as possible to reality. But the camera never manages to record what your eyes see, or what you feel at the moment. The camera always creates a new reality.

I follow many tragedies around the world. At one point I [will] feel like I’ve accumulated an enormous amount of information, a critical mass amount of information, and I feel like acting – reacting. My manifesto has always been the same: I cannot act in the world before understanding the world. I will not move a finger. I will not come up with any ideas – nothing – until I actually understand what is happening.

As we all know, the objective and mission of the photojournalist is to show us the reality of the world. And in order to capture that reality, they go to dangerous and tragic places at the expense of their lives. I see them as the conscience of our humanity; they represent for me what is left of our humanity.

My work is always based on reality. I’m not an artist that creates works of fiction. I’m not an artist who is in my studio inventing things out of my imagination – everything is based on reality, on real facts.

Images have an advanced religion; they bury history.

Reality cannot be photographed or represented. We can only create a new reality. And my dilemma is how to make art out of a reality that most of us would rather ignore. How do you make art when the world is in such a state? My answer has been to make mistakes, but when I can, to choose them. We are all guilt victims choosing mistakes, and as Godard said, the very definition of the human condition is in the mise-en-scéne itself.

Certainly when you do a work for a public space, you lose control.