Alessandra Sanguinetti

For more than twenty years, American Magnum photographer Alessandra Sanguinetti (1968, New York) has followed the lives of Argentine cousins Guillermina Aranciaga and Belinda Stutz. What begins as a chance meeting on a ranch near Buenos Aires in 1999, grows into a long-term photographic project, in which Sanguinetti captures the girls' dreams, struggles and harsh reality of rural life. The exhibition 'The Adventures of Guille and Belinda' presents Sanguinetti's poetic, imaginative and penetrating work through almost fifty photographs.

When Sanguinetti first meets the children, they are nine and ten years old. She follows the girls – who become icons in her life and work – as they grow up in rural Argentina, a predominantly male world of gauchos and peasants. This environment heightens the tension between their innocent childhood and the sometimes harsh reality. The photographs from this period exude a poetic, almost theatrical atmosphere. In staged images, Sanguinetti references iconic works from art history. For example, she directs the girls in a barn in one photo as a Madonna and an angel, and in another they float on a river, inspired by the famous painting Ophelia. Using her analogue Hasselblad camera with an 80mm lens, natural light and square framing, the photographer gives the images a soft, timeless feel.

Transition to adulthood

As Guille and Belinda grow older, the tone of Sanguinetti’s work shifts. The playfulness of their childhood gives way to more intimate, sometimes confrontational images of their coming of age. The photographs show the girls at key moments in their growing up: dating, pregnancy, and motherhood. In one of her most powerful images, Belinda, 19 and pregnant, poses with a large knife in her hand—a symbol of both her vulnerability and her determination. Despite the changes in their relationship, the girls’ bond remains the common thread running through the series. Sanguinetti captures the experience of growing up on a ranch, where the dreams and realities of their lives change with the times. As the photographer herself says, “Time is something I always think about. So it’s natural that time is almost a protagonist in my work.”