Reviews

Javier Silva Meinal

The most important thing a photographer or artist can do is show us something that we can't see. Peruvian photographer Javier Silva Meinel succeeds in doing that in his exhibition ‘Piel del Amazonas”, (Skin of the Amazons) at the Zelda Cheatle Gallery in London.

A picture of a man holding a Salton fish, so huge that he struggles to encircle it's girth with his arms, interacts playfully with an image of an old woman holding an Alligator tail peeled at the end to reveal the white flesh within. These are bizarre and mystic photographs of native people taken in the heart of the Peruvian Amazon in Iquitos an island famous for having the biggest commerce of exotic animals in South America . Javier Silva Meinel moves away from the busy area of Iquitos and goes into the jungle to explore the relationship that indigenous people have with the mythical river of the Amazons.

There is a unique, timeless quality in these black and white photographs; they could have been taken in the 19th century as ethnographic portraits and as such remind us of the actual purpose of photography to record and preserve. Silva Meinel creates these haunting and unusual portraits using a simple canvas as a background and the natural light filtrated by the trees of the jungle.

Reminiscent of Irving Penn's portraits of tribes, these extraordinary portraits success lies in the fact that they do not have the colonial or exotic point of view that Penn could not escape. On the contrary, there is a true sense of collaboration between photographer and subject. Silva Meinel allows the natives to interact directly with their main source of nourishment that comes from the river.

They may have found some of his posing eccentric or odd (the construction of a hat out of a fish tale, or a dress made out of piranhas worn by a young girl), but this only lends a gentle atmosphere of humour between sitter and portraitist, and arguably affords the subjects a strength and beauty inextricably linked with the land that is their home.

The most important aspect of this work is the uniqueness and originality. Its fresh food for the eye and that's what is so lovely about it especially in a world where we are used to seeing glossy colour portraits of clichéd characters. The serenity and intimacy of a small gallery is conducive to viewing the prints, and you have the chance to explore in detail the content of the images and study the subject matter instead of being in a large busy gallery space where you have to fight you way through to see a glimpse of an image.

Piel del Amazonas, is at Zelda Cheatle Gallery, 99 Mount Street , Mayfair, London W1K 2TF. Tel: 020 74084448. www.zcgall.demon.co.uk until the 5th of November 2004.

Antonio Mandralis

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