The two girls on the front cover of “The adventures of Guille and Belinda and the enigmatic meaning of their dreams” are cousins and Alessandra Sanguinetti first photographed them in 1999 when they were nine and ten years of age.
Sean Sheehan
Sanguinetti, an American born in New York in 1968, lived in Argentina from 1970 to 2003.
She came to know the cousins when they visited her friend in the rural west of Buenos Aires province. They were, she remembers ‘always running, climbing, chasing chickens and rabbits. Sometimes I’d take their picture just so they’d leave me alone and stop scaring the animals away, but mostly I would shoot them out of the frame’. Then, gradually, their presence stopped bothering and she began photographing them. It was the beginning of a great adventure for all three of them.
The friendship that would develop between Guille and Belinda is glimpsed in their childhood as they play together in fields, lounge about at home, pose as young women sipping cocktails and whimsically dress up in whatever comes to hand. They pretend to be someone else as they take on roles, sensing there are different possibilities for who they will become.
There is no text in the book other than one page by Sanguinetti telling how she came to know the cousins and the photographs themselves have no captions. You are left alone with the pictures and following the passage of time as the girls grow older becomes an invitation to ponder the nature of the enigma referred to in the book’s title. In an interview with Sanguinetti, it is clear that the temporal dimension is an important factor: ‘Time is something I’ve always thought about. I am constantly aware of time passing and struggle to come to terms with it. So, it’s natural that it is almost like a main character in the work – a force that no one can contain and that we have to accept and learn how to flow with’.
While Lou Reed’s song, “Beginning of a great adventure”, playfully considers the prospect of having children from a parent’s point of view, “The adventures of Guille and Belinda and the enigmatic meaning of their dreams” opens a window onto a real-life contemplation of being a child, moving from pubescence to adolescence with a friend of around the same age. There is a pleasing mystery to their companionship and central to Sanguinetti’s achievement is to wordlessly show this and the development of their friendship.
There is a sequel to this book, “The adventures of Guille and Belinda and the illusion of an everlasting summer”, and the prospect of a third volume. Time will tell.
“The adventures of Guille and Belinda and the enigmatic meaning of their dreams” by Alessandra Sanguinetti is published by MACK.
(Photos by Alessandra Sanguinetti, from “The adventures of Guille and Belinda and the Enigmatic meaning of their dreams”, 2021. Courtesy the artist and MACK . Photos provided by the publisher and authorised for publication)
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