Julio Grinblatt

Photography is the central theme and medium of Grinblatt’s art. Since the mid-nineteen nineties, he has investigated the ontology of the photographic discipline in his project Usos de la fotografía [Uses of Photography]. Grinblatt systematically explores the modes of perception enabled by the photographic image; he engages the technical, artistic, and social dimensions of the photographic device and places emphasis on the apparatus of the camera as bearer of a system of representation. Grinblatt chooses the word “uses” to articulate empirically photography’s ability to produce thinking and knowledge and to posit the mixed nature of the medium, that is, how it acts and ensues both inside the image and beyond it.
Thus far, Usos de la fotografía has unfolded as ten parallel series that vary widely. In each one, the artist deploys specific procedures that determine the conditions in which photography is produced, where photography is understood both as image and as event. Though somewhat bold, these procedures can be described in a set of instructions sometimes displayed alongside the work.
Indeterminacy is a key factor in Grinblatt’s art. In some works, he lets third parties define the image, thus depersonalizing authorship. In others, he exposes the photographic act to adverse conditions and calls attention to the contingencies surrounding it. In his practice, Grinblatt explores that which lies between the distinct instances in which the image is formed: capture, developing, and display. On occasion he attempts to dislocate the times and spaces where those instances ensue to vindicate each and every reverberation from the time the camera is shot until the photograph is viewed and the archive constructed.