The threshold of uncertainty II

“The threshold of uncertainty” is a series developed in two phases. In both cases the subject of the photograph is the same: Catholic religious icons. Only the point of view changes, the focus of attention. Below we reproduce fragments of the text "They look at us when we see: from/to the camera in Adrián Fernández's photograph" by the critic Antonio Eligio Fernández (Tonel) . (…) If photography is the gesture that stops time, in order to create a fixed image of what is represented, the sculpture -with its traditional affinity for the lasting: stone, bronze, wood- aspires to exist in an eternal time, and accepts with naturalness the aging, even shows it with pride, in exchange for access to a life that does not depend on the instant and that, on the contrary, is measured in decades, if not centuries. Not for pleasure, in front of these images, we admire the footprints of blows and falls, traces of accidents, discoloration and surface breakage. These marks define the sculptural object as something living, changing: bodies and faces suffered, injured. And, since they are religious figures, for many of us sacred, we are moved by their fragility: it is difficult not to see them as moderately fallen angels, victims of an erosion not only physical - they have come to less, forgotten; perhaps expiating some unnamed guilt. Stopping on the obvious traces of wear and tear and the passage of time, Adrian makes it easier for the symbols of the supernatural to become familiar, endearingly human. He succeeds, too, when he paints the back of the figures. That viewpoint, by dodging the familiarity of the frontal perspective, shows the characters in a posture that brings them closer together and makes them vulnerable. This, in turn, allows us to appreciate these objects-the sacred and the ritual they embody-with an unprecedented degree of intimacy. In this way, the figures have been lightened to some extent from their solemnity. Humanization is a key result of the way these photographs represent sculptures. In this sense, I find extraordinary the portraits of worn, decaying faces. In his glass or wooden eyes, and in the unfathomable melancholy of his painted and torn faces, I think I see an image that perfectly illustrates Berger's beautiful idea of visibility: "The eye he receives. But also the eye that intercepts "1. 1 John Berger,"Sobre la visibilidad", in El sentido de la vista (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 2006): 238.