Christian Catafago

I had just finished a large survey of Buenos Aires Muralism, the paintings in support of Cristina Kirchner, when all stopped as Nestor Kirchner passed away.

I grabbed my two trusty old cameras plus all the film I could load and went downtown to see the national emotion.

Over the next three days I witnessed the mourning of a nation, all strata and age groups of the population presented their respects and attachment in different ways.

At first, the support and grievance expressions were totally spontaneous; older citizens would carry newspapers up high in silence, younger people would chant on the streets, united with strangers, anthems and songs of popular culture. Very fast, all this would organize itself, and an itinerary to present condolences would be developed, as the crowd would grow with persons coming from the provinces.

On the second day, attendees would wait in this spring sun of the southern hemisphere in October 2010. The line soon grew beyond the length of Avenida de Mayo, Avenue so called in remembrance of the May Revolution, starting point of the independence of Argentina and all South America.

As the Avenida de Mayo, the main avenue leading to the Casa Rosada, the Presidential House, was crowded, all youth and workers groups would reach Plaza de Mayo, via the adjoining streets with large flying banners.

I remembered Alberto Korda only trusting his old Leica’s in the shoulder-to- shoulder crowds to capture Che Guevara and was happy to have taken my old sturdy Leicas to move amongst the emotional young demonstrators busting with energetic group dances.

I had relegated my old Rolleiflex, a camera of 50 years of age, to the bottom of my bag. On that second day of Mourning Nestor Kirchner, I had taken this camera with me: remembering the photographs that Gordon Parks, the black militant photographer who had portrayed, with his Rolleiflex square format camera, the struggling farming workers. With the same tool as Gordon Parks, I already and relentlessly had made composed, deferent portraits of the Argentines in line to present their condolences to President Cristina Kirchner, the widow of the Iconic former President Nestor Kirchner.

On the third day, as befits the biblical dimension of the moment, there were torrential rains while the funerary convoy passed through town. As the crowd became even more compact, I remembered the images of Peron’s funeral in July of 1974 taken by Sara Facio struggling within the crowd. I could photograph relentlessly with my Leicas even as their meter and measuring distance tools would not function and I was myself soaked. Just as Paul Fusco struggled in the lighting conditions with his Leicas while on the Bob Kennedy’s funerary train from New York to Washington DC in June 1968, I had I set mine to low speed exposures to record what I saw.

I saw a crowd bursting in tears while we were all at the gates of the presidential house and the coffin left, I saw streets where chants were going out of all open windows while the convoy passed during the storm, I saw the President Cristina Kirchner going beyond her security detail to resolve a passage problem and comfort passerbys, I saw citizens leaning their hand on the vehicles of familiars of Nestor and Cristina Kirchner, I saw strong built state security guards fall in tears and hug at the end of this supremely emotional moment.

Though these images could have interested the press at the time, while Jean- Luc Monterosso, Director of the MEP was browsing through my archives, I mentioned to him, that these images were to be kept unpublished for ten years, in deference to the History of the Argentine People; to them, thus including my Argentine son, I dedicate these images.