"Marcelo Brodsky: Buena Memoria"
2004-04-02 until 2004-05-15
Photofusion Photography Centre
London, , UK United Kingdom

Photofusion, in collaboration with Autograph ABP, will be staging the first major exhibition in the UK of the Argentinian photographer Marcelo Brodsky. The exhibition addresses what has now become known as Argentina's Dirty War in which the state systematically executed its own citizens and, more personally, the disappearance of his brother Fernando at the age of twenty two; one of the many victims of a country devastated by the obscenity of death without bodies.

General Vileda staged a coup that forced Argentina into the cruel military dictatorship that lasted until 1984. The terror resulted in 2,300 opponents of the regime officially dead and at least 30,000 missing, most believed to have disappeared between 1976 and 1978. The artist and human rights activist Brodsky went into exile in Barcelona where he began his training as a photographer, returning to Argentina seven years later in 1984.

Buena Memoria is a complex and deeply touching study about individual suffering. The work is based on a graduation photograph of the class of 1967 at the Colegio Nacional in Buenos Aires. The picture is the point of departure for a multi-faceted biographical research project in which photographs from family albums, videos, personal and literary notes and more recent documents attempting an analysis of the dictatorship are found side by side. With this reconstruction of his friends´ biographies and that of his brother Fernando, who remains missing to this day, Marcelo Brodsky has created an impressive memorial.

Buena Memoria has been exhibited widely including Spain, Germany, Czech Republic, Latin America, Israel, Italy and New York with two books published in Germany and Argentina. His work is featured in many art collections including Museo de Arte Moderno, Buenos Aires; Bibliotèque Nationale de France, Paris; Fernando Baur Collection, Madrid, Spain; Art Museum of the Americas, Washington DC and the University of Essex Collection of Latin American Art, UK.

In 2002, Marcelo Brodsky was one of ten curators who contributed to Blink, published by Phaidon. He has written on photography for a variety of newspapers and magazines and writes a column for New York's Photo District News. He is president of Latin Stock, a Latin American image network, and of the Focus Latin Stock Foundation.

On Sunday 4 April from 4-6pm, there will be a special event at The OTHER Cinema. Marcelo Brodsky will give a presentation about his work with screenings of his public interventions, followed by a panel discussion chaired by curator Gabriela Salgado. For information, please contact The OTHER Cinema, 11 Rupert Street, London W1D 7PR. Telephone: 020 7734 1506

Buena Memoria is supported by Visiting Arts and The Argentine Embassy. Special thanks to the University of Essex Collection of Latin American Art for loaning a work to the exhibition.

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