Having a broad-minded look may involve appreciating something completely or concentrate that look in a single point.

Looking ourselves in the mirror is looking at oneself and at any other possible person. Faces, gestures, characteristics, fragments and sensed or observed looks are all in the same spot, space and reflex of ourselves and others.

This central theme of the Cantafio Collection – Magazine Cover Art invites us to play a game by going through it. Magazine covers hiding a stress element which appeals and make us to focus, even though everything will go beyond that.

Everything that questions us is a point of great power. A particular force which goes beyond time and offers a straight dialogue with us. Face to Face.

We will find there a special intensity where faces become mirrors of ourselves turning the observer into the observed.

Who are we and why do we connect to those faces?

The answers are part of the game proposed in this central theme.

I have always thought of it as an intimate photo shooting act, which will end up to be something very public… it is as if thousands of eyes are peeping through my camera.

Therefore, the importance of thinking, producing and choosing the right photo to be seen by millions of people.

Being cover of a magazine was always a longed-for possibility to a photographed personality. It is an award and a great compliment. Something has been or will be done in order to deserve to be on a cover.

Choosing the photography for the cover is a very particular matter, it has to get the necessary impact, from producing the character, its gestures, light, to the way it evokes graphically, so as to be “the Cover of a magazine”.

Along graphic history, there has been iconic covers which are nowadays remembered, and where the editor’s eyes has posed his attention to decide which photography is the right one to be on the cover.

Some magazines have always had its own way to produce its covers, I particularly feel identified with the close-up, the person’s face at full, so as to have the power to transmit what it has meant to, like an artistic expression, and this Exhibition is a clear example, the magazine covers tell us about unique moments along with unique personalities.

As a photographer, it is always a huge challenge and incentive to produce a magazine cover. It is a one-time moment, imagining the character, creating its make-up and proper clothing to be ready for the set, placing the cover lights (this is the way we call it), entering into a unique journey of connection with the photographed person, and getting the best shot for that magazine cover. To put it briefly, it is a sublime photographic act!

GABRIEL ROCCA

Photographer & Rocca Arenas Studios

If the eyes are the mirror to the soul, the face is the greatest expression of the strongest and most enriching feeling. An expression channel in itself, which allow us to observe personal stories or social mandates. A face expresses and determines. In that precise and unique determination, many aspects appear which allow us to distinguish a pure language. To choose a cover in which the sole protagonist is a face, it is necessary to look for authenticity and development of what means to say without words. The most sincere confession is needless of headlines. A look at the camera can penetrate frivolity to transform it into a once-in-a-lifetime moment. And in that instant, the click of the camera along with the gesture of a face without secrets, it is what allows the reader to see authenticity, and in many cases, also art. Over the decades, magazines all around the world have used the cover art to show faces of its most significant personalities and portrait a historic event. Presidents, athletes, historians, musicians and artists have stamped their rebel yell and incitement, only by a true expression captured closed up. Fear, loneliness, irreverence, power or sex are just a few options when posing to the camera. Just a wink is enough for the reader to be an accomplice. Over its 30 years of weekly circulation, CARAS magazine has used this resource in many opportunities to highlight beauty, glamour or just the “journalistic” information a face tells, shouts or expresses. The exhibition “FACES”, thoroughly classified by Juan Cantafio, gives us a global view of what the world, through its publications, considers the “close up” to be the most direct way to communicate and recreate an artistic channel, in spite of the magazine era or gender. Challenging past and present time, these covers are a kaleidoscope in which we can identify and feel that life could be a magazine cover, with just a rictus we can immortalize feelings on Paper and Art.

HECTOR MAUGERI

Journalist and Publishing Vice-director

CARAS MAGAZINE VICE-DIRECTOR.

• Curator and Collector JUAN CANTAFIOCuratorial Texts

  GABRIEL ROCCA Photographer & ROCCA ARENAS STUDIOS

  HECTOR MAUGERI Journalist and CARAS Magazine Vice-Director

  Producer HUGO ZANÓN / IDEA2 (www.idea2.com.ar)

  Web FERNANDO FELICES / IDEA2 (www.idea2.com.ar)

  Press Agency PATRICIO CARVAJAL

  Press Agency Group GISELA ACOSTA y ALEJANDRA AMARA

  Staff of CCSM

  Montage LUCIANA GIACOBBE

  Communication JUANA RASPO

  Visual Arts ALEJANDRO CEJAS

  General Director DIEGO BERARDO