Andres Serrano is an artist who, like a documentary photographer, reports on the human condition. In all his work, he focuses on human reality, in which a social and political background is always present. Serrano has produced abstract works such as Bodily Fluids, as well as pseudo-documentary work like Torture and Denizens of Brussels.

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Serrano became famous for his controversial artworks, of which the most well-known is his depiction of a statuette of Christ submerged a glass of urine. The photo caused a scandal in 1989. He was threatened and reviled for it, but the photo permanently put him on the map, as an important contemporary artist. His recent work, however, is not so controversial, and Serrano explains his position on this: “Piss Christ was created as a work of devotion. I am a Christian. I was born and raised as a Catholic. I can no longer call myself a real Catholic, because I no longer go to church, but I am a Christian. Catholics and Christians are the same people. We all believe in Jesus Christ and the Pope, and that's what matters to them. I made Piss Christ as a work of art; it was not intended to be blasphemous or sacrilegious. Many people have said that the title of the photo was shocking, but I had piss and I had Christ, so I couldn't name it any other way. It is an organic work. It was part of a series of artworks about body fluids. We take for granted the image of Christ that people often hold, but it is a symbol for the son of God, who suffered greatly. The body fluids came from his body, and with it, his human dignity.”

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Human suffering appears to be one of the central themes that run like thread through all his work. “I am interested in the suffering of humanity, because I follow Jesus Christ. I am a follower, but I prefer not to talk about it, because it is boring for people who are not Christian. Even during Christmas, people don't want to hear about it, but essentially, it's my faith. My artworks have a political, social, religious, but also an aesthetic agenda. I don't really have to say that. I believe that people can read well between the lines. The message I want to give is that I am an artist. I don't always deal with subjects that are only beautiful.” His interest in suffering and transient life is also evident in his series The Morgue, which features confrontational photos of corpses in a morgue. “Death is part of life. When The Morgue came out it was shocking, but not for me. You see death in feature films, in literature, in the newspaper, so I don't find it that special. But many people were very impressed. They apparently saw death for the first time. I don't think The Morgue was controversial.”

"My artworks have a political, social, religious, but also an aesthetic agenda

Controversy, according to Serrano, is an inevitable aspect of artistry. “As an artist you simply work with unorthodox materials, and try to do other things than usual. I have often said that creativity is the interpretation of dreams. You have a dream but you cannot control it. Then you wake up, and you can interpret what you dreamed. Then you can connect the dots, but dreaming is an unconscious process that you have no control over. It's the same with my job. Only after the creative process can I begin to understand my work.”

Homeless people as art

In Brussels, Serrano made the series Denizens of Brussels: bright and flash-lit portraits of begging homeless people. The series is a sequel to Residents of New York. “The series was commissioned by the Royal Museum of Brussels, because they had seen the Residents of New York. The director asked me if I wanted to come to Brussels and make a series of homeless people in Brussels, so it could be included in the exhibition. I decided not to call it Residents, but Denizens. In the dictionary, denizen is described as a living being, a plant, animal or human, that takes root in a certain place. The homeless denizens in Brussels are very surreal, theatrical and bizarre. In New York they ask for money with a plate, in Brussels they beg for money with babies, or sometimes on their knees, and almost trembling on their legs. That's a form of theatre that we don't have in New York. So, I found the homeless in Brussels much more surreal, and that is understandable, because Brussels is the city of surrealism.”

His work on the homeless could be interpreted as a project by a social documentary photographer, but Serrano doesn't want to see himself like that, at all. “What connects both series is the portrait of the individual, and at the same time transcending its symbolism. Don't call me a photographer, because I'm not. I am an artist. I am not interested in photography. What I have added to photography, as a conceptual artist, is that I have made it abstract. For example, my work Milk Blood is a reference to Mondrian. I wanted to take pictures that looked like paintings and refer to abstraction and minimalism. I took a picture in monochrome, all red, that's blood. So, in that view, I jumped out of the box of photography into pure abstraction. I studied painting as a teenager, but I decided not to become a painter. When I was nineteen, I often moved and I didn't feel like taking all those big canvases with me, but I still have the negatives from that time. It was a practical choice and photography suited me better, because photography has more power. Photography shows the real, but also shows the fantasy and the unreal. I go back and forth between representation and abstraction, and between reality and surreality. But anything is possible in my world, because as an artist you have no fixed boundaries.”

Political agenda

The homeless series stems from another series that Serrano made in 1990, The Nomads. “The Nomads were portraits of the homeless. I was inspired by the photographer Edward Curtis, with his portraits of Indians. He often photographed the Indians with a backdrop. He put them in a studio-like environment. We go to a studio to have a portrait made, but homeless people cannot. So, I decided to take the studio to the homeless. I photographed them in the middle of the night on the metro, with a background and a flash installation. We had to do that very quickly, because we had no permission. Curtis called the Indians the vanishing race, and I found the homeless to be a vanishing race. These people have no name. They can just disappear without us noticing. I wanted to give them a face and a name.”

Serrano appears to have had similar intentions with the homeless in Brussels. That is why he also uses a flash on location. By doing this, he separates his models from the world in which they otherwise risk to disappear. “I like to use flash because it gives a surreal and theatrical effect. It's kind of a Hollywood light. It also isolates the individual. It almost becomes a movie set. If I were to do the homeless as a photojournalist, I would do a regular report with natural light. But as an artist, I add my own light.”

Was it easy for Serrano to get in touch with the homeless? "It was not difficult. I always approach people the same way. I always bend over when I ask a question, because I don't like to approach people from above. Then I tell them that I am an artist and that I want to take a picture of them. I offer them compensation for posing. They understood that they had to remain themselves.”

"In fact, half of America lives on the poverty line

Serrano does not immediately answer the question about whether the series of the homeless also has a political agenda. "I have a conscience. I see that the homeless are not only at the bottom of society, but that there is a large group of people who will never become homeless, but are close to it. In fact, half of America lives on the poverty line. One percent has all the money and the middle-class suffers, and the middle-class counts for forty-five percent of the American population. That is one of the reasons that Donald Trump has been elected president.”

Story of the outsider

The photos of homeless people have the same theme as the campesinos of Cuba. “In Cuba I made portraits, like Curtis did with the Indians who worked on the land. The campesinos of Cuba are hardworking people. They are the cowboys of Cuba. When I photograph people, I don't think about inequality. In a way, I identify with everyone I photograph, and even if you can say that I am quite successful, you have to remember that there was a period when I was on the street between my twenties and thirties. I was not homeless, but I sold drugs on the street. I was a drug addict. So, I know what it is to be poor and live on the street. I have never seen a big difference between people. There is something in those people that I can relate to, even when I photograph members of the Ku Klux Klan. I see them as underdogs and outsiders, and questionable. I also see myself as an outsider, also in the art world. I stand with one foot in it and the other out, but I need that distance.”

Serrano answers very briefly when asked what the most important aspect of photography is: “The photo.” But he quickly adds an explanation. “The photo tells the story, and as they say: a photo tells more than a thousand words. And hopefully, a thousand photos are worth more than a million words. When I was young, I dreamed of entering the world of music. I grew up in the 1960s, when there were major cultural, political, social and musical revolutions. Music was then the most important thing in the world for me. After the British invasion, Bob Dylan came and everyone wanted to be him. At least, I wanted to become Bob Dylan, but I couldn't sing, so it was better for me to choose photography as an art form. I didn't have to practice; it just came naturally.”

He does not believe in photography as the representation of reality. “You have to navigate between showing reality and showing your own world. In the digital world of social media, anyone with a phone can be a photographer. Now, you can see thousands of photos online that look like beautiful Ansel Adams landscapes in black and white and colour, with the difference that they are not Ansel Adams, because he did it first. That is why it is important to be the first to choose your subject.”

Does Andres Serrano see his photography as a translation of contemporary themes? “I embrace the role of interpreter of my time. After 9/11, I made the series America. Before that, I took photos of people from all walks of life, from policemen to homeless people and famous people like Yoko Ono and B.B. King. I also photographed Donald Trump. I chose it to represent the idea of ​​America. At the time, he was still a relatively-unknown businessman. Now he is the president.”

Books

Andres Serrano, Torture, Collection Lambert, ed. Les Éditions de l’Amateur, Paris, France, 2016, 191p.
Andres Serrano, Salvation : The Holy Land, ed. Hatje Cantz, Berlin, Germany, 2016, 225 p.
Last Words, Photographs by Andres Serrano, author: Gabriele Tinti, ed. Skira, Lausanne, Switzerland, 2016, 104p.

andresserrano.org

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