For over twenty years, the American Magnum photographer Alessandra Sanguinetti (1968, New York) has been following the lives of the Argentinian cousins Guillermina Aranciaga and Belinda Stutz. What started in 1999 as a chance encounter on a ranch near Buenos Aires, evolved into a long-term photographic project in which Sanguinetti captures the dreams, struggles, and harsh reality of the girls’ lives in rural Argentina. The exhibition ‘The Adventures of Guille and Belinda’ presents nearly fifty photographs by Sanguinetti highlighting her poetic, imaginative, and poignant work.
When Sanguinetti first met them, the cousins were nine and ten years old. She decided to start following the girls — who would become icons in her life and work — while growing up in rural Argentina. This environment, a male-dominated world of gauchos and farmers, reinforces the tensions between the cousins’ innocent childhood and the occasionally harsh reality. The photographs from this period convey a poetic, nearly theatrical atmosphere. In staged images, Sanguinetti is referring to iconic works from art history. For one photograph, for instance, she made the girls pose in a barn as Madonna and angel, while in another image they are floating in a river, a scene inspired by John Everett Millais’ world-famous painting Ophelia. Using her analogue Hasselblad camera with 80 mm lens, natural light and square framing, the photographer gives the images a soft and timeless appearance.
Transition into adulthood
As Guille and Belinda are growing older, the character of Sanguinetti's work is shifting. The playfulness of childhood makes way for more intimate, and occasionally confrontational images of their transition into adulthood. The photographs show the girls at important moments while growing up: dating, pregnancy, and motherhood. In one of Sanguinetti’s most powerful images, a pregnant, 19-year-old Belinda is posing while holding a large knife in her hand, a symbol of both her vulnerability and her determination. Despite the changes in their relationship, the close connection between the girls is the common thread running through the photo series. Sanguinetti captures the essence of growing up on a ranch and shows how the course of time affects the cousins’ dreams and reality. In the photographer’s own words: “Time is something I’ve always thought about. So, it’s natural that it is almost like a main character in the work.”
About Alessandra Sanguinetti
Alessandra Sanguinetti grew up in Argentina. She studied anthropology at the University of Buenos Aires, and later went on to study at the International Center of Photography in New York. Her long-term project with Guille and Belinda resulted in the two highly-praised photo books ‘The Adventures of Guille and Belinda and The Enigmatic Meaning of Their Dreams’ (2010) and ‘The Illusion of an Everlasting Summer’ (2020), with plans for a third volume. Since 2007, Sanguinetti has been a member of Magnum Photos. She is known for her empathetic and people-oriented approach. This will be her first solo exhibition in the Netherlands.
Press
