Raúl Corrales(1925 -2006)

On April 15th, at 81 years of age, Raul Corrales, an emblematic figure in Cuban and Latin American photography, passed away. Winner of the National Plastic Arts Prize in 1996 (for the work of a lifetime) and Doctor Honoris Causa of the Superior Institute of Art (Havana, 2005), Corrales also integrated the team of photographers who won the principal laureate in the Prize for Contemporary Photography of Latin American and the Caribbean 1981, organized that year by the Casa de las Americas. The prize-winning group ¿ Hermanos (Brothers), that reflected the new social situation in Nicaragua after the overthrow of the Somocista tyranny ¿ constituted a paradigm of photographic essay, a genre defined by the Brazilian Jose Medeiros as ¿an collective operation of eyes, heart and intelligence. We photograph what we see, and what we see depends on who we are¿. Hermanos demonstrated that Raul Corrales could, and knew how, to go beyond photojournalism, although he always publicly qualified himself as a photojournalist and not as the artist of the lens that he also was, with his high aesthetic flight and elevated visual communicability. Such was his level of self-demand that the extreme care in settings, the values of illumination, the composition and the impression were scarcely technical resources for him, not a determining expression of this creativity that makes a photographer an artist. Portrait photographer of great figures ¿ such as Che Guevara ¿ Corrales also photographed often-anonymous towns folk. But he didn¿t portray people in studio poses, instead during daily struggles and whilst carrying out historical missions. For this reason he has been considered an epic photographer. His eye was always expectant and his finger always ready on the button because ¿history isn¿t just written, it is also illustrated¿, as he said in the last documentary that he did in his life: Yo miro y veo (I look and see). In truth, he looked at and saw different moments of the agitated biography of his country, above all. And he took the pulse of reality, drama and poetry, while his own was beating with equal intensity whilst registering it in memorable instants.