ARCHIVO P.M. 2010- 2016
During a period of six years Alejandro Morales collected more than 500 photographs depicting bodies published his local newspaper P.M. in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. The time of extreme violence made Ciudad Juárez among the most violent cities in the world, marked by the large number of intentional homicides committed in its streets. The limits of what the press could publish were blurred as it was so common to find oneself in the middle of a shootout or come across an abandoned corpse. Morales removed all the corpses that he found in the photographs in the P.M. Newspaper by manually erasing them with a gum eraser.
Morales approached the newspaper from its name, understanding it as a "Post Mortem" space. When what was supposed to be in the image no longer appeared, the void that was left opened up a chance to think about what was actually happening. The softness of the eraser, the duration of the erasing process and its ritual connotations confront the immediacy and brutality of these cases. These new images intend to grant an opportunity for mourning, a more dignified form of death.
The crude way in which unidentified bodies are exhibited and photographed shows how the media is echoing the violence of the drug war and fuelling the necroaesthetic build-up which developed around it. Beyond the obvious reference to cremation of the body and to the remaining ashes, Alejandro MORALES’s erasures are a critique and an aesthetic solution at the same time. The softness of the gum, the duration of the erasing process and its ritual connotations radically confront the immediacy and brutality of these death cases. At the end of the action, the place of the body remains white, as if someone finally took the trouble to cover it with a white blanket, a gesture soothing the collective deprivation of decency and mourning.
Rona Kopeczky,Curator at Ludwig Museum in Budapest
Polvo eres, 2012 - 2013
Glass cube; 14 grams of rubber residue with which 100 bodies of the Juarez newspaper "PM" were erased.
Acquisition Award XIX Biennial of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia
Acquisition Award XIX Biennial of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia
Damnatio memoriae, 2014
EL RETRATO DE TU AUSENCIA, 2023
Awards:
2023 Shortlisted for the Paris Photo - Aperture First Photobook Award
2022 Luma Rencontres Dummy Book Award Arles - Special Mention
2022 Luma Rencontres Dummy Book Award Arles - Special Mention
In media:
Info:
Swiss bound softcover
Lenticular photographs mounted on covers
112 pages, 74 works
Offset printing
17 x 22,7 cm
First edition of 600 copies
ISBN 978-91-987606-5-1
Co-published with Kultbooks & Los Sumergidos
Designed by Fernando Gallegos ︎
May 2023
Lenticular photographs mounted on covers
112 pages, 74 works
Offset printing
17 x 22,7 cm
First edition of 600 copies
ISBN 978-91-987606-5-1
Co-published with Kultbooks & Los Sumergidos
Designed by Fernando Gallegos ︎
May 2023