In 1953 in Buenos Aires, a group of local and exiles photographers gathered and founded a collective known by the name of the object that identified them: La Carpeta de los Diez (The Folder of the Ten). They shared knowledge and practices, and exhibited their work in several Argentinian spaces for art. Throughout the experience of photography and the exhibition of the work, La Carpeta de los Diez is fully part of the Argentine artistic avant-garde. The group is at the same time an example of the cosmopolitanism that constituted the city of Buenos Aires at that time.
The group featured three members from Argentina (Pinélides Fusco, Eduardo Colombo, Augusto Valmitjana), three from Germany (Annemarie Heinrich, Hans Mann, Max Jacoby), two from Italy (Giuseppe Malandrino, Juan Di Sandro), two from Hungary (Georges Friedmann, Alex Klein), one from Switzerland (Ilse Mayer), one from Russia (Anatole Saderman), one from Austria (Fred S. Schiffer) and one from Poland (Boleslaw Senderowicz). The group had ten members but in total 14 photographers were involved in it: when four had to abandon the group for different reasons, four others joined. They met monthly to exchange ideas, practise together, and prepare exhibitions. Their main task was filling a so-called Folder with photographic material that they then later discussed. After deciding together which topic or style they would work on (nude, flower, hand, solarisation effect, etc.), one member inserted a single photograph into the Folder and brought it to circulate between the members so that they could discuss and criticise the work. Each member wrote a commentary on the work and placed it in the folder before passing it onto the next person. Once everyone had commented, the photo was discussed in a group meeting. In most cases, the Folder reveals the way these artists in exile had mastered the local language, as a lot of them wrote in Spanish with absolute fluency and accuracy, testifying to their successful integration into Argentina. What the group’s members valued most, though, was creating, being stimulated, having their own photographic work reviewed by experts in the medium. They met in different public and private spaces but one of them was the photo studio of one of its founding members, Annemarie Heinrich (Av. Callao 1475, Recoleta).
A speech celebrating the opening of the 1st Exhibition at Galería Picasso in September 1953 pronounced the following: “The Folder turned out to be more than a living school for us: as it was founder (builder) of critique, opinions and discussions among the different persons who were keen on photography; it also remained as an exercise of professional emulation (increase) and aesthetic improvement to achieve a better level in the production and creation of all and every one of its members through the active practice of critique, the mutual encouragement of auto criticism, the incentive to individual self-improvement through collective education and influence. The Folder has helped us to enjoy, above all, the pleasant experience of working together, of appreciating interchange and reciprocal support […]” (Speech at the opening of the 1st Exhibition at Galería Picasso, 1953). Without any external funding, every month La Carpeta de los Diez collected money for exhibitions: to buy racks on which to exhibit the photographs, to print the catalogues. In the exhibitions each member could show up to seven works: five of them could be chosen freely, and two had to come from the Binder. Innovatively, the photographs were displayed on racks, without frames, and were printed in a 50 x 60 cm format, which was large for the time. The group held six exhibitions: in the Galería Picasso (in Calle Florida 363, 1953), at Salón Kraft (in Calle Florida 681, 1954), at Salón Siam (in Calle Florida 936, 1956), at Salón Harrod’s (in Calle Florida 877, 1957), at the Office of Foreign Affairs (1958), and in the Opera Theatre (Av. Corrientes 860, 200 metres from Calle Florida 1959). They never succeeded in selling their work (Karp Lugo 2018). That Buenos Aires at the time had no existing market for artistic photographs explains the need for gathering together with the goal of creating a space for their work. Within the group, at a micro scale, networks are revealed to be crucial.