Studying at the Havana’s academy of fine arts, and then studying in New York, the Cuban Jesse A. Fernandez discovered photography in the early 1950s and began a series of portraits of everyone America and Europe considered to be great Spanish-speaking writers and painters.
Jesse A. Fernandez’s work began in the streets of New York. He was fascinated by reflections, the play of mirrors, and the multiplying it allowed. He also hunted down transparencies, shots through window panes resulting in surrealist compositions of form and action. Walls covered in graffiti, newspaper, or posters were also natural subjects of the artist, who looked for graphic elements and staged them with the eye of a painter.
In 1980, Jesse A. Fernandez made a stunning report on the Capuchin catacombs in Palermo. The catacombs were filled with mummified priests and bishops. Though its \ existence was known and had been an attraction since the 19th century, when Jesse A. Fernandez took the portraits of the dead, one was able to recognize their character and, strangely, infer their personality. Thanks to his discerning eye, new life had almost been given to them.
An exhibition being shown at Galerie David Guiraud in Paris is revisiting the career of this little-known photographer with a small retrospective of thirty-five to forty images mixing vintage, posterior, and posthumous prints
Jesse A. Fernandez, une œuvre, 1952 – 1986
Galerie David Guiraud
5 Rue du Perche
75003 Paris
France
