Silvina Luna’s Immortal Smile: A Photograph of the Late Model Exhibited in Brazil on the Day of Her Funeral

A photograph of Silvina Luna was exhibited in Brazil on the day of her funeral (Courtesy Rosana Schoijett)

Sometimes unexpected coincidences surpass reality. Sometimes art is simply the answer to everything that is unknown. In this case, the death of Silvina Luna brought feelings of pain, of helplessness, of desire for justice. Faced with her long struggle to overcome her health problems as a result of the surgical interventions performed by doctor Aníbal Lotocki in 2011, her life ended on August 31 due to terminal and irreversible kidney failure.

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After several days in which his body rested in the judicial morgue awaiting the autopsy requested by his lawyer Fernando Burlando, his remains were finally buried in the Actors’ Pantheon of the Chacarita Cemetery on Wednesday, September 6. At that time, in São Paulo, Brazil, an Art Exhibition was being presented in which one of the photographs exhibited had Silvina as the protagonist.

It was a series of images that photographer Rosana Schoijett had taken in 2005 in Mar del Plata for H magazine, from Editorial Perfil. Silvina was doing a theater season in La Feliz, after her incipient popularity after having participated in the second edition of Big Brother, at the end of 2001 where she was runner-up. She was 25 years old, her dreams were coming true and the public adored her for her simple and sincere character. Over time, she didn’t lose any of it. It was six years before she would undergo Lotocki’s operating room and begin her ordeal of pain and death.

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On that occasion, a sunny day by the sea, the model had done a production on the beach like so many others. And between one shot and another, the photographer asked him to pose next to her. In a bikini, with her auburn hair loose and wavy resting on the sand, she lay down next to Rosana, who asked her to remain with her eyes closed to avoid the intense rays that would make them squint, until the moment she was taken. For this, the photographer asked Julio Romero, who was assisting her in the production, to release the shutter of her camera at the exact moment she indicated. And so she did it.

The work of which Silvina Luna is a part is exhibited in an art exhibition in Brazil (Courtesy Rosana Schoijett)

The work, called Self-portrait with Silvina Luna, is part of a series of photographs of Schoijett with several celebrities that he had to photograph for publications of the Perfil group, where he worked at that time. In times when selfies did not exist, the possibility of taking self-photographs was an art. In São Paulo, the exhibition where it is exhibited is called A Slow Coming Coming, where works from the Oxenford collection at the Tomie Ohtake Institute in that city are also exhibited.

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In dialogue with Teleshow, Schoijett told in detail what that moment with the model was like. “I worked for many years as a photographer for Editorial Perfil. In the same day we could go from a photo shoot in a luxury hotel to a police case in a villa. She needed to do something with that everyday contrast and the number of personalities she interacted with on a daily basis. At some point I decided to imitate those who take photos with celebrities who go to her restaurant and that’s how this series began. At the end of each session, I asked whoever was nearby to take several photos of me next to the interviewee, respecting the frame I indicated. For her production with Silvina, I was accompanied by Julio Romero, a colleague whom I asked to photograph us in the same place where he had previously photographed her. He did this test so that I could confirm the framing, that’s why we have our eyes closed, to avoid the sun. Then we did the “good thing”, both of us looking at the camera, but this was the one that interested me, both of us resting for a while from our jobs, dreaming about something perhaps,” she reflected.

Although the photographer did not see Silvina again after that day of work, she remembers her “as a very warm and pleasant person.” “At that time, in parallel with her editorial work, she participated in the Kuitca scholarship. There I began to share these images and from the returns I received the Kiosk series was formed.”

With this photograph Silvina Luna managed to transcend her public image to become part of an alternative place of contemporary art. The photo was exhibited at Malba in the Vida Real exhibition in 2005, just a few months after it was taken. And it was also the cover of the cultural criticism magazine Otra parte, in 2008. “When Otra parte magazine published this series I felt that that was the best place for these photos. They were born in a magazine and now they returned to another, but because of the type of publication it was I felt that it restored a little of all the alienating part that the mass media has,” said the artist.

Finally, Schoijett reflected on this coincidence in which Silvina’s photograph was exhibited on the day of farewell to her mortal remains. “When I uploaded this photo to my networks, Cristian Peyón left this comment: “The stereotype kills you.” As a photographer I always have conflicts when making decisions about how to portray someone. The amount of conscious or unconscious decisions we make about the type of pose or flattering lighting, whether to hide features or overweight, plus the modifications that come later with retouching. All those surgical operations that we perform with our images, what we do almost without question, contribute to reinforcing a stereotype that must be deconstructed, urgently, so that there are no more victims wanting to reach an image that destroys,” he analyzed.

Just a few days ago, chance – or causality, you never know – meant that the farewell after the death of beloved Silvina and a photograph of her that would somehow make her immortal, with her smile, her fresh gesture, that moment coincided in parallel. of his life in which he had found peace.

2023-09-10 01:30:13
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