Paz Errázuriz
La manzana de Adán (La Palmera, Santiago)
La manzana de Adán (La Palmera, Santiago) by Paz Errázuriz is part of the celebrated series La manzana de Adán (Adam’s apple) that spans 5 years (1982-1987) of documenting the lives of transgender sex workers in La Jaula and La Palmera brothels in the Chilean cities of Talca and Santiago. The series, whose subjects were extremely subversive, as well as critically vulnerable to the repressive political regime, were finally shown in Chile shortly before the end of the dictatorship in 1990, and later compiled in a book of the same title with texts by Peruvian writer Claudia Donoso.
This work portrays a scene at La Palmera brothel in Santiago. The person at the front of the photograph dances while smoking a cigarette. They are reflected in a mirror, multiplying the point of view we get into that instant. It reveals the ease with which Errázuriz related to the people she photographs and how she has been able to permeate otherwise secretive environments, such as those of queer identities and lifestyles.
Paz Errázuriz’s photographic practice is embedded in a long history of resistance against authoritarian rule in Chile. Unlike many of her peers, Errázuriz did not go into exile during the 17-year-long dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. She photographed marginalized and dispossessed communities in her country: homeless people, transvestite sex workers, circus performers, wrestlers, boxers, or women incarcerated in a psychiatric prison ward. Using photography, she portrayed a quiet resistance embodied through borderline practices and ways of life. It was the military coup and ensuing dictatorship that prompted Errázuriz to take on photography, and her resistance to the political and economic regime shaped the subject matter of her work.
She continues to affectionately explore the lives of those who escape normative preconceptions about gender, mental health, or body stereotypes. Errázuriz is interested in working from the margins, gently revealing those fragments of society that are easily obliterated in hegemonic discourses and world-views.