Sachgebiete

Beschreibung:

95 S.; illustriert; 28 cm; kart.

Bemerkung:

Gutes Ex. - Spanisch, englisch. // Like all human creations, works of art, being what they are, specific spheres of reality, in turn refer to other spheres of reality, although in some cases, the uninitiated observer tends to merge both planes, and take for granted that they are one. Perhaps it could be said, in this connection that art spans two poles: one incarnate in music; the other, in photography. In one pole, it is not usually easy to determine at first glance or - at first hearing - what other sphere of reality a piece of music refers to; even a man as intelligent as Borges was led to say that in music, content and form are one and the same. Despite the coarseness of these terms, though, it's undeniable that a piece of music, no matter how abstract, says something that is not the piece itself, to those who are familiar with the corresponding code a sine qua non prerequisite for appreciating any work of art, any message, much in the same way that the word nightingale cannot sing or the word coal, smudge. Logically, if we are not familiar with the code, Indian music or European music or any word in any language may appear as a manifestation of sound. However this is only due to ignorance; it does not reveal the true nature of music, in which, like in any other sign system, to an universe of forms corresponds an universe of meanings: in this case, what the sound of the body is saying. Only when both universes are apprehended can it be said that we have received the music. In the other pole there is photography. The risks inherent to its appreciation are the reverse of those of music: it is so evident that photography is habitually a picture of something else, that it is often forgotten that photography is not that "something else" but itself: photography. Coming back to Borges' crude division. If music seems to be all form, photography seems to be all meaning. However, it has long been accepted that this is not so, not just in the case of photographers who minimize the object or subject, to the extreme of abstract photography, but in any case that can be justly termed photography. It may seem odd for me to recall all the above in the preface of this book which compiles pictures of such decisive, beautiful, moving events as were many in the early years of the Cuban Revolution. Quite to the contrary, however I deem it a favorable occasion for this reminder. The enormous impact of these events, far from lessening the importance of photography, notably enhanced it: they posed the stimulating challenge of matching them in all their profoundness and beauty. The fact that the challenge was accepted and met with a creative response, does honor to photography, and to Cuban art in general. ? (S. 9)