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Icebox Gallery presents

Mi Vida, Mi Amor (My Life, My Love)
Photography by Eduardo Blidner  1959-2015

Five bodies of work will be represented in the exhibit “Mi Vida, Mi Amor” by Argentine Photographer Eduardo Blidner.  

Beginning with his first Icebox Gallery exhibit “Tango Argentino” in September, 2000 Eduardo and Howard Christopherson, Icebox Gallery owner, grew to become good friends and worked together long distance on five solo exhibits. After “Tango Argentino” 2000 there was “City vs. City” 2007,  “Argentine Drag Queens” 2009,  “La Venus Argentina” 2011 and most recently “Argentine Iron Flowers” 2015

Eduardo Blidner is arguably one of the most gifted photographers to arise from Buenos Aries, Argentina in the 21st Century. He is a story-teller one frame at a time. His work rises from his love for his country and it’s culture and people.  Eduardo explored life through his camera lens. His images are intimate, romantic, and often revealing something that is or was taboo.

Eduardo created his images with a Leica camera. (Leica co-sponsored the Tango exhibit) When photographing a stage performance once, an older lady siting in front of him suggested he use a Leica camera because the shutter makes little sound. That began his love for the camera. Over the years Eduardo worked tirelessly in the darkroom creating his black and white images. He loved to tone and try different photographic papers for various affects. Eduardo approached his work in series, concentrating his efforts on the current series until he had enough work to tell his story that would exhibit in a solo show.

On October 31, 2015 the day his last Icebox exhibit ended Eduardo Blidner 56, took his own life. He sent me a letter to the Icebox Gallery explaining that living 15 years with chronic back pain it had become intolerable and untreatable so he had decided to commit suicide. Eduardo added, “Death does not exist. We die when we are forgotten.”
He thanked me, and said “Goodbye” with a big hug. Eduardo went on to bequeath all of his remaining artwork in the gallery to me.    

I have personally selected seven images from each of his five major exhibits to honor this great man, photographer and dear friend.  ~Howard Christopherson

“Mi Vida, Mi Amor by Argentine Photographer Eduardo Blidner.
Opening Saturday October 21, 2017 exhibit continues through December 22, 2017
Opening night hours: 7:00 – 11:00 PM

Mi Vida, Mi Amor will be on display during Northrup King Building event Art Attack.

Photographs of Eduardo Blidner in Minneapolis for the opening of "Tango Argentino"

“Tango Argentino” The sensual Tango, an erotic flavored dance born in Buenos Aires, is a raw mixture of Passion and Pain. Argentinean native Eduardo Blidner captures the melancholy and the beauty of this ritual dance. Finding inspiration in the streets and dance floors of Buenos Aires, Blidner takes us beyond and beneath the surface of this once forbidden dance.
 
Eduardo Blidner photographs capture the spirit of Tango rooted in the cityscape and the urban humanity of Buenos Aires. He describes this as the fractual seed of Tango that can be found in the alleys, streets and dance spots of Buenos Aries. Blidner images connect the intensity of the Tango dance to the history of this port city and melting pot. The ghosts and pagan fertility myths from the native past now dance together with a melancholic remembrance of home imported within the international immigrant population.
The Argentine Tango was born in Buenos Aries over 100 years ago in an era of Victorian values. The close cavorting couples were forbidden to dance and it was considered indecent and immoral. This view still lingers in our collective unconscious making the Tango still seem erotic and subtly dangerous.
 
“City vs. City”  2007
"... Writing about his series City vs. City, he said: "When I produce pictures of cities, I think about this: cities are points of reference to our personal histories. Plus the history of a person can pass entirely only one city, without ever having known any other. Now then, I wonder how would the course of events change if the person lived in a city other than his or her original one? Could a different environment change our destiny?..."

The photographic series “Tango Argentino” by Eduardo Blidner has been exhibited all over the world since he had his first solo exhibit in the U.S. at the Icebox Gallery in the year 2000. Eduardo traveled to exhibits and collected new images resulting in the exhibit “City vs. City” 2007.
List of cities in original exhibit:
Brescia – Italy, Buenos Aires – Argentina, Gmunden – Austria, Helsinki – Finland
Köln or Cologne – Germany, London – UK, Milano – Italy, New Orleans – USA
New York – USA, Orvieto – Italy, Philadelphia – USA, Rome – Italy, Vienna – Austria 
Ushuaia - Argentina

“Argentine Drag Queens” 2009 “Eduardo’s portraits are as revealing as they are sensitive. The urban night opens up to the drag queen and Eduardo’s camera. They change their clothes and persona.” – H. Christopherson

Eduardo included some revealing notes volunteered by some of his subjects. Afrodita, real name Carlos Saulnier, says - You can create another disposable self... Michelle, real name Roberto Dealoy declares – “To do drag is to have power in the night.”
“These men’s lives are part of the reality of Buenos Aires - a reality which emerges as if in a dream. My aim with the photographs is to acknowledge my respect for those men as they wish to be seen - as Drag Queens, by making their dream-like existence into something concrete and positive.All my models are artists who perform in night clubs, t heaters, cinema, television and in the fashion world. These photographs are collaborations between myself and the model: we feed off each other to produce the final image. The fusion of their art and my art explodes into the final photographic work.” – Eduardo Blidner

“ Venus Argentina” 2011 Marked a return to his love of the Tango.  Through the spirit and romance of Tango Eduardo explored the sensual nude with several beautiful models in classic Buenos Aries locations.

“The woman is the mother of the Argentine Tango. I wish this woman to be seen by those who do not know her, and looked at again by those who do know her. This woman transmits sadness, happiness, desires and frustrations. The Tango sensual from its birth conveys the erotic relation between a man and a woman, with the latter always its epicenter.” Eduardo Blidner

The locations captured in these photographs are as revealing as the lovely muses them selves. Sometimes the lady or ladies are posed in a den or stairwell revealing the ornamental elegance found in the capital city of Buenos Aires lending them selves to the visual poetry portrayed in the pleasant scene. Each image
is tasteful and quietly beautiful expressing a romantic perspective.
   
“Argentine Iron Flowers” 2015 Eduardo Blidner intimately explored a subculture of women body builders found in his home city of Buenos Aries. This exhibit provides a rare look at female body builders twisting and flexing their muscles in the nude. Each athlete is photographed in a straight on honesty that only raw black and white film can translate. 

Eduardo Blidner says he has found a relationship to the sculptures of the Renaissance with these women. Eduardo had come to think of the rippled bodies as sculptures on to themselves and the woman body builder as her own artist. Each of the images in the exhibit challenges the viewer who may have the more common concept of feminine beauty and strength.

Mi Vida, Mi Amor (My Life, My Love)
Photography by Eduardo Blidner  1959-2015

Five bodies of work will be represented in the exhibit “Mi Vida, Mi Amor” by Argentine Photographer Eduardo Blidner.  

Opening Saturday October 21, 2017 exhibit continues through December 22, 2017
Opening night hours: 7:00 – 11:00 PM

Mi Vida, Mi Amor will be on display during Northrup King Building event Art Atack.

*Special Thanks to Greg Ochs for helping with framing and installation.

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