{"id":631781,"date":"2026-09-21T21:22:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-21T21:22:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/631781\/"},"modified":"2026-09-21T21:22:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-21T21:22:11","slug":"photographer-nelson-garrido-who-embraced-an-aesthetics-of-the-ugly-dies-at-73","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/631781\/","title":{"rendered":"Photographer Nelson Garrido, Who Embraced an “Aesthetics of the Ugly,” Dies at 73"},"content":{"rendered":"

Obituary<\/a><\/p>\n

The Venezuelan photographer interrogated power, religion, violence, and eroticism over a six-decade-long practice that faced relentless censorship from church and state authorities.<\/p>\n


\n \"Silvia
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"Nelson Garrido, Caracas, 2019 (photo Vladimir Marcano, courtesy Vladimir Marcano)<\/p>\n

Venezuelan artist Nelson Garrido, who made photography a practice of absolute freedom, died on August 20, 2026, days before his 74th birthday. The news of his death was confirmed by Gala Garrido, his daughter.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Born in Caracas on August 24, 1952, Garrido spent his youth in France, Italy, and Chile, raised by his father, a painter and Army General in the diplomatic corps. At 14 in Paris, he worked for the kinetic art pioneer Carlos Cruz-Diez; at 16 in Chile, Garrido befriended and photographed poet Nicanor Parra, taking pictures that became his first published photographs.<\/p>\n

Upon returning to Venezuela, Garrido moved to a shantytown in Caracas and staged theater with worker communities for C\u00e9sar Rengifo and created set designs for plays by Jos\u00e9 Ignacio Cabrujas<\/a> and films by Rom\u00e1n Chalbaud<\/a>. These theatrical and community immersions shaped his utopian anarchism and informed his overall creative practice.<\/p>\n

Drawing on set design reliquaries, crucifixions, and the work of Old Masters such as Hieronymus Bosch and Francisco Goya, Garrido interrogated power, religion, violence, eroticism, and the “aesthetics of the ugly.” In his photo series La nave de los locos (1999), he cast members of a local fishing community aboard a vessel, allegorizing a nation adrift. Central to his iconography was the pig, which he used as a stand-in for Catholic sacred figures and politicians. His 1993 photograph \u201cLa crucifixi\u00f3n del cochino levitando\u201d (1993), depicting a crucified pig, sparked outrage across Venezuela. Priests protested and declared him persona non grata.<\/p>\n

\"\"Nelson Garrido,\u00a0“Bleeding Caracas” (1996) (photo courtesy Gala Garrido \/ Fundaci\u00f3n Nelson Garrido)<\/p>\n

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