UNTITLED (HANGER, STOCKINGS,…)

Milagros de la Torre

Untitled (Hanger, Stocking,..) was made during the same period of time and using the same technique as the series Under the Black Sun* but its attention is directed to a feminine subject matter. The pieces of clothing are presented as inverted negative images and they appear unresolved and open, without any obvious conclusion or definition.

The intimate narrow format, delimited by photo corners, presents a sequence that starts with an empty hanger and finishes with a hand leaving the frame. All original works were made in 1992 and are toned gelatin silver prints. 4 x 2 in. each approx. (10 x 5 cm. each).

Milagros de la Torre

Specifications / Credits

Title: Untitled (Hanger, Stockings, …)
Artist: Milagros de la Torre
Year: 1998 (photogravure edition)
Process: Hand-pulled photogravure
Photogravure: Paul Taylor
Edition: AP 4/4
Print Size: 16 1/2 x 13 in
Image Size: 8 x 4 1/8 in
Collection: Milagros de la Torre

Note: the photogravure portfolio includes 5 of the 7 images of the series.

*Untitled (Elongated Tights),* 1992. Photogravure, 1998

*Untitled (Stockings),* 1992. Photogravure, 1998

*Untitled (Hanger)*, 1992. Photogravure, 1998

*Untitled (Shoes)*, 1992. Photogravure, 1998

*Untitled (Dress),* 1992. Photogravure, 1998

*Under the Black Sun references the rudimentary technique used by street photographers in Cusco, Peru, whose expertise was to produce ID photographs within minutes. The technique started to disappear as the pre-digital era and the millennium approached. The photographs were taken directly onto photographic paper with a custom-made wooden camera. The exposed paper was developed inside the camera, with the aid of developer and fixer in recycled tins. As the negative was removed to dry in the intense mountain sunlight, a layer of Mercurochrome was automatically applied to the skin of the subject. This red hand-painted negative was then re-photographed to produce the classic ID photo.

The harmless retouching with Mercurochrome worked as a filter which lightened the skin of the subject, conferring not only a ‘racial enhancement’, but also a socio-economic, aesthetic and cultural one - with the belief of colonial origin - that a person with fair skin possesses all these qualities intrinsically.

These ideas are questioned in Under the Black Sun, as the process is suspended in the middle, unresolved, during the negative stage, with the red veil of applied ‘medicine’ still covering the skin of the subject.

The work also questions how through its own technical essence, the authority of photography as register is destabilized.

Milagros de la Torre (b. 1965, Peru) is a photographic artist whose work addresses the mechanisms of observation and how image language responds to the notions of racial identity, violence, surveillance, and censorship. De la Torre critiques the photographic apparatus and exposes its flaws. De la Torre has received numerous accolades, including the Rockefeller Foundation Artist Grant, the Romeo Martinez Photography Prize, the Guggenheim Fellowship (2011), and the Dora Maar Fellowship (2014). Her work has been exhibited broadly and is part of permanent museum collections, including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Art Institute of Chicago and The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

https://www.milagrosdelatorre.com/