La Manzana de Adán (Adam’s Apple), 1982-84/2014
- Medium
- Inkjet prints
- Dimensions
- Each: 12 5/8 × 17 3/8 in. (32.07 × 44.13 cm)
- Accession Number
- 2021.35.1-.20
- Copyright
© Paz Errázuriz, Image courtesy of the artist and Cecilia Brunson Projects.
- Credit
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
Purchase with funds provided by the Drawings and Photography Committee and the Jumex Fund for Contemporary Latin American Art
The series ‘La Manzana de Adán (Adam’s Apple)’ (1982–84) by Chilean photographer Paz Errázuriz was originally published as a photo-essay with text by journalist and artist Claudia Donoso.
This group of photographs delves into the lives of Mercedes, Evelyn, and Pilar, three “transvestites” who worked in the brothels of La Jaula and La Palmera in Santiago. They are shown on the street, at home, and with friends and family; joy and pain alike, and the structural relationship between them, are made visible. Errázuriz lived in the communities of her subjects for four years, such that she could document the communities from within and attain a degree of intimacy that her portraits bear out. The images were not widely circulated for nearly two decades because gender-nonconforming people risked persecution under the Chilean military dictatorship. Thus, Errázuriz’s photographs of people at the social margins are positioned to perpetuate the political dissidence of her subjects.