From Painted Rituals by Lorena Guillen Vaschetti

Photography brings together so many people, worlds and cultures in such a remarkable way. 

I had the pleasure of meeting Argentinian photographer Lorena Guillen Vaschetti in Bratislava, Slovakia last month, where I first saw her series of Aboriginal ritual dances, a selection of which are shown here in Lens Culture. During the same photo festival, I met a man I have admired for a while but had never met in person, Finn Thrane, the former director of Museet for Fotokunst in Denmark. He was kind enough to contribute his insights about Lorena’s photography in the text that accompanies her series. 

These photographs also inspired a poem by the Argentinian poet Facundo Cabral, which we’re deighted to include here as well.

On the Painted Rituals

Every man was a line of the poem I always wanted to read, but was also

the painting before the painting and the dance before the fire,

that is to say all the manners of art in a small group of men, that were resisting

to leave the garden of Eden. A family that without knowing it, were also dancing for us; 

for us who are ungrateful, that is to say: sad.

And  they did this every day in Adelaide, at dawn;

that’s when I began to suspect that the secret lies in the realization.

— Facundo Cabral