Hernán Díaz REVELADO

The exhibition Hernán Díaz REVELADO can be visited through February, 2016 in the Bibliographical Exhibitions Room at the Luis Ángel Arango Library. Hernán Díaz REVELADO is the result of a curatorial process applied by Santiago Rueda to a selection of images from Hernán Díaz's photographic archive, acquired by the Luis Ángel Arango Library in 2012. It features 1,000 images in print and digital copies, and the selection is a representative sample of the photographer's work, including the unique shots of public figures, artists, and intellectuals that made Díaz the quintessential portraitist of his era in Colombia. The exhibition features a select group of photographs, among them session with artists and iconic figures of modernity in Colombia; a selection of vistas of Cartagena; and photographs of landscapes and industrial scenes representing the photographer's interest in the environment. This selection of images, some of them never published, reveal in a way a lesser-known Díaz: the photographer who carefully constructs his own identity as an artist on the basis of the decision of selecting certain shots for publication, while keeping others "hidden" in his archives. "People die and I don't want them to die (…). I want them to remain, and one way to accomplish that, to achieve the impossible, is through portraiture. This is my humble tribute to life. There remains Man in his ephemeral cardboard immortality, desperately struggling against oblivion", Hernán Díaz said in an interview with Gonzalo Arango. The exhibition is complemented by a selection of newspapers, magazines, and books that outline a fragment of the history of Colombia's editorial world by the hand of one of the country's most important photographers, and an invitation by the Luis Ángel Arango Library to all Instagram users to share their own images of Bogotá mountains, with the hashtags #HernánDíaz #CerrosdeBogotá. The invitation is intended to create an archive of images of the current situation of the mountains, and to underscore the fact that, from many perspectives in the city, these mountains are part of the everyday landscape for the denizens of Bogotá.