* By Federico Jorge
I was born in France in 1971 and arrived in Argentina when I was only 3 or 4 months old. I lived in Bahía Blanca until ’74 when my mother, who worked for the Universidad del Sur, began to feel threatened by the dictatorship going on at that time. I have memories of the tension and fear of that decade but also the pleasure I was feeling from contact with nature.
When I was 6 I moved to the suburbs of Buenos Aires. It was very pleasant there and I enjoyed the water, the trees, playing with kites, bikes, scooters, skateboards, horses, cats and dogs as well as fishing, skiing and exploring the mountains.
I discovered photography when I was 11 and moved to the province of Salta. We had slides of those years in Buenos Aires and I looked at them repeatedly. They helped me remember the beautiful moments that I still hadn’t experienced in Salta. In the past I find keys to my present that help me grow and find more happiness, more fullness, more love. The past has brought me questions to resolve and when I can, I answer them.
Salteños (“people from Salta”) wasn’t a conceptualized work. I suddenly found myself taking a lot of shots that could be an essay and then I reorganized my photos, my trips, and my objective and arrived at this series. It’s a window that contains a critique but also a realization to transform, to enjoy a certain energy, a certain humor. For me it was and is a window into myself. I still don’t consider myself a Salteña. I live in Salta and have appropriated many things from here, but I’m still a foreigner.
