‘Lo que pasa’ by Juan Hitters
FOLA, Buenos Aires, August 2021
Curatorial statement
Text by Luz Hitters
In Lo Que Pasa, Juan Hitters (Buenos Aires, 1966) uses constructions' surfaces as a means to reach our most sensitive aspects. His quest is to find beauty in unlikely locations. Hitters photographs spaces where nature reclaims its territory, blurring the division between the organic and the inorganic. In this way, he exposes the transience of existence.
The exhibition incorporates works from his series Concreto and Rupestres, creating a contrast between monochromatic works and explosions of colour. The end result is a common pictorial discourse in a kind of unfinished abstract expressionism that mimics the character of its subjects. Hitters photographs on a large scale–one on one–inviting us to inhabit a fragment of the captured reality. His aim is not to confuse or obscure the referent but to create a particular and direct foreshortening, blurring the line between abstraction and the figurative.
Self-defined as an eternal wanderer, the photographer explores cities in a spiritual act, essential to his creative process. His peregrinations present him with scenes, findings of beauty and reflection ignored in the maelstrom of passers-by. Hitters enjoys finding these compositions that are the product of chance.
His record has a documentary character, where he allows himself to be carried away by the logic inherent in each of his findings. The buildings act as the reflection of living organisms, incorporating life marks with their alterations and erosions. Through the lens, Hitters records how the passage of time generates a unique and unrepeatable history, immortalising memories that will remain unspoken. In these fragments, he manages to record the multiple layers of our environment: what was, what is happening, what remains and what will never be again.
About the artist
Previously a psychoanalyst, Juan Hitters opened his photography studio in Buenos Aires in 1994 and began working for television channels, portraying artists and celebrities. In parallel, he developed personal work, much appreciated by the legendary label ECM Records, used to illustrate albums by musicians such as Keith Jarrett, Dino Saluzzi, and Vijay Iyer, among many others. These found Hitters' abstraction to be a means of conveying the complexity of the music. His photography captures the ephemeral character of sound and the importance of silence. Hitters has been regularly commissioned by international magazines and editorials such as Wallpaper, Elle, Vogue, GQ, New York Times and Phaidon. In addition, he has photographed over 100 album covers of contemporary and classical music for other labels such as Deutsche Grammophon, BIS and Naxos. He is also a former professor of Advertising Photography at UCA, and has conducted seminars at various universities.
Hitters has won the 2011 Ventanas al Futuro award for his contribution to Architectural Photography and the Gran Premio Adquisición by the 103rd National Visual Arts Salon (2014) with "Concrete #1". This series has been exhibited in London in 2020 and sponsored by the Australian Embassy and the Argentine Embassy in the UK. His work belongs to the permanent collection of FoLa, the MNBA and the Bibliotéque Nationale de France. He has been part of solo exhibitions at the TGSM Fototeca, Federico Churba, Andy Goldstein, and has participated in group shows at the MNBA, Triennale di Milano, Museo Sívori, CC Recoleta, FADU/UBA, among other institutions. He has also participated in conferences such as ECM 50 Years at JazzMi (Milan, 2019) and has exhibited at RE:ECM (2019, South Korea). Hitters currently works and live in Bologna, Italy.
