Biography
MMARÍA JOSÉ D' AMICO WAS BORN IN BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA, IN 1972, WHERE SHE LIVES AND WORKS AS A PROFESSIONAL PHOTOGRAPHER.
. She studied Filmmaking and she worked in Publicity Film for several years. In 2000, she decided to dedicate herself entirely to Photography. She did workshops in Foto Club BA. She studied photograph conservation. She specialized in Publicity Photography with the photographer Ricardo Sanguinetti. She did the Author’s Rights workshop with Ana María Saucedo and took part in the workshop of photographic expression with Juan Travnik for three years.
In 2000, together with Eva Fisher, she created the D’Amico – Fisher studio, that ran until 2005, specializing in Publicity photography, media, editorials and reproductions of works of art. Between 2003 and 2004, they worked in the modernization and cataloguing of the Grete Stern Files. They took part in La Màquina de Arte, a project by Vía Postal/ Sonoridad Amarilla with an exhibition in ArteBa and Centro Cultural Recoleta.
In 2003, she worked together with her partner, Fisher, in the photographs for the book called Teatros Independientes de Buenos Aires (Independent Theaters of Buenos Aires) by Juan Garff/ Ana Groch (edited by the National Institute of Theaters for the IV Buenos Aires' International Festival, together with the theater General San Martin). From this work, in 2005, both partners made an exposition in El Camarín de las Musas, obtaining an honourable mention in the category Theatrical Photography in the "Premios Teatro del Mundo 2005" (Theatre of the World 2005 awards), given by the University of Buenos Aires through the "Centro Cultural Ricardo Rojas" art centre.
Their pictures were published in Fotomundo magazine, in the famous Fiestas Populares (Popular Festivities), Madres (Mothers) and Fotografía Urbana (Urban Photography).
Since 2008, she has taken part in the Bola de Nieve project.
She has taken part in several colective exhibitions: She has participated in several colective exhibitions: Gente de mi Ciudad, ArteBA (2001) Proyecto Cartele (2004) La Maquina de Arte, ArteBA (2003) and Centro Cultural Recoleta (2009), Libros y Lectores, Centro Cultural Recoleta and XXXI Feria del Libro (2006), Infancia, Centro de Exposiciones and Muestras de Arte Contemporáneo La Casona de los Olivera (2009), Proyecto Piñata, Arte en la Recova (2009), Gente de mi Ciudad, 10 years retrospective, Centro Cultural Recoleta (2009), Abrir el juego (Let the game begin), Teatro de la Ribera (2009). Abrir el juego (Let the game begin), Provincial Museum of Bellas Artes Rosa Galisteo de Rodríguez (Santa Fe 2010) XVI Encuentros Abiertos- Festival de la Luz 2010.
She showed "El no lugar" ("The no place"), in the University of Social Science's photogallery. In 2008, she released a book called "Imágenes Latentes, diario de viaje" ("Dormant Pictures, travel journal"), which is an only-one copy, exposed in Feria del Libro de Autor Espacio Ecléctico and also in Feria Internacional de Libros de Artista, Fotoseptiembre, (2009, Mexico).
Bien de Familia (Community Property), British Art Centre (BAC) Encuentros Abiertos- Festival de la Luz 2010.
She has received the prize of the International Forum of Portfolios 2010, XVI Encuentros Abiertos – Festival de la Luz, together with her partners Marcel Antelo and Lorena Guillen Vaschetti.
Bien de Familia (Community Property), Paraty em Foco 2010 (Brasil). ).Bien de Familia 5 FotoFestPoA , Porto Alegre, Brasil, 2011.FotoGalería del Teatro General San Martín (2012).Centro Cultural Recoleta (Descubrimientos Encuentros Abiertos- Festival de la Luz 2012), Archivo de Bogota (Fotográfica Bogotá 2013)
Vision of art
1. Choose a work that represents you, describe it in relation to its format and materiality, its relation with time and space, its style and theme; detail its production process.
I choose "Grilla # 1: Infancia". It is a unique work, consisting of 63 portraits of dolls, distributed along a grid. The idea was to speak about “childhood”, to evoke memory through the object. The toy receives powerful projections of a still developing personality during childhood, thus establishing a certain play with the spectator, and we find ourselves facing these projections again today, this was an interesting challenge to me. With this in mind, I began to portray toys that had survived the passing of time. They had to belong to friends, relatives, acquaintances…they had to be toys that presented a confrontation. After a first draft, I opted for anthropomorphic forms, discarding toys such as cars, balls, etc. I took pictures of 110 objects with these characteristics, as if they were passport photos, which allowed me to reinforce the idea of identity. I slightly modified the color of the backgrounds in order to create the sensation that the photos had been taken in different circumstances. I then placed them on a grid because it seemed to me the proper manner of presenting a global subject, and I gave it an arbitrary order because memory manifests itself in a chaotic, rather than a linear way.
2. In general terms, how would you suggest to approach your work?
The reading of images is personal and, in a way, random. I do not know how to suggest a single way, but what I can say is that, until now, my work follows the path of discovery, and that my images usually speak of what no longer is. They are characterized by the frontal nature of the viewpoint. I work on every image as if it were a “portrait”, which allows me to individualize and convey a feeling of reality and versimilitude.
3. In reference to your work and your position in the national and international art fields, what tradition do you recognize yourself in? Who are your contemporary referents? What artists of previous generations are of interest to you?
I do not recognize myself in any tradition. Being a photographer is a trade to me. As influences I can mention my teachers Rodolfo De Nevi, Ricardo Sanguinetti, Juan Travnik. I have been moved by artists from diverse disciplines, such as Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Berni, Iturria, and Xul Solar in painting. Walker Evans, Robert Frank, William Eggleston, Humberto Rivas, David Levinthal, Liliana Porter, Esteban Pastorino in photography. David Lynch, Wim Wenders, the Cohen brothers, Tim Burton, Kusturica, Hayao Miyazaki and the Quaid brothers in cinema.
4. Choose works or exhibitions from the last ten or fifteen years which in your opinion were very significant and explain why
I think of the retrospective on Ernesto Deira, as a long-deserved recognition that finally came to pass. The work of the Periférico de Objetos, which were groundbreaking in the country, regarding the codes of puppet theater, experimenting with different expressive possibilities and with the mobilization of the spectator’s senses.
