Jorge Aceituno (born 1956)

In 1982 I began Photography studies in “Fotoforum” school. In 1985 I initiated my career as a theater photographer in “El Trolley.” It was, at that time, one of the few spaces in Santiago where nonofficial art expressions developed.

In 1992 I began to work with a group of mentally disabled young students of my sister’s classes. It was the beginning of a personal work that I can develop deeply.

To me, photography has a sense of rupture and provocation since I started. That’s why, maybe, I feel attracted the fissure of man, his spirit, the human vulnerability in conclusion, his beauty. That’s a space that I offer to share from photography to participants and spectators.

I’m interested in the breakdown of the ways to see and perceive, paying attention to the new within the old, exploring different ways of seeing and questioning the own ways. That’s why I usually develop my projects with the participation of “disabled people in a labor of co-authorship, why not a psychic disabled person couldn´t become an author? or a blind person be a photographer?”

Among my projects there is “Con Agua de Cielo (with water from sky),” consisting staging of universal and Chilean paintings chosen and represented by mentally disabled youngsters.

This project has been crucial to the adjudication of some national funds and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation fellowship in photography 2003.