"Words and images are two different animals." (William Eggleston)
In 1933 Eric Pixton left Buenos Aires aboard the Lybo, a canvas kayak with paddles, a pair of sails and 150 kilograms of equipment. His aim was to travel some 1200 kilometres upstream along the Uruguay River, across the borders of Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil, to Iguazú Falls. Pixton's journey became a book published in 1936 by Argentine publisher Peuser, then fell into obscurity. Almost a century later, Mariano Herrera (Buenos Aires, 1970) followed Pixton's river routes with his camera. Rather than simply recreating a forgotten expedition, La sombra de un río reflects on time and memory while portraying life along the shores leading into the delta of the Paraná, South America's second-largest river.
Pixton's traces soon become the foundations of Herrera's own visual narrative. Old recollections of the original adventure intertwine with recent portraits and written stories about the delta's inhabitants.
A mixture of past and present, but also of reality and fiction, in which places and people are inevitably eroded by the sediment of the Uruguay's brownish waters. The passage of time is ever-present in Pixton's worn photographs, yellowed pages and crumpled handwritten notes. The same is true of the half-abandoned settings and weather-beaten old faces Herrera encounters. Riverbank dwellers sit on a porch, have a drink, stand in a corner or simply lie on a bed. They look at the camera against damp walls, rusty kettles or wooden rooms decorated with knives. A similar mood suffuses Pixton's past evocations and Herrera's renewed images, as though the river periodically shaped every form of life around it. Wet or muddy bodies seem moulded by its endless flow. Humans and creatures swim and rest in its waters until the starry night falls over the riverbank beside the forest. Like the dusty documents in which Pixton tried to capture his elusive memories, the dilapidated houses and factory ruins photographed by Herrera seem futile attempts to build something lasting against nature's inexorable course.
The book alternates colour with black and white, newspaper cuttings, old archives and typewritten sheets that take on the river's own hue. Herrera's affinity for real people in their everyday surroundings avoids any lush or idealised view of the region. The transition between his photographs and Pixton's becomes deliberately blurred, until both sets of memories seem carried away by the water. This subtle blending acts as a visual reminder that everything must and will pass, unlike nostalgic reinventions of the past such as retrofuturism and steampunk. Herrera's personal interpretation of the Uruguay River's wild banks looks backwards and inwards, as true literature and travel should.
