“It is the first time I see it as if I only saw it through the camera.” – Adolfo Bioy Casares

A long table. A long dining table. A panoramic image of thirteen men eating supper on a long dining table. One man stands in the middle of the group: he stands out; he seems distant, apart from the rest of the figures, and yet he seems to unite them. The composition and disposition of the characters are symmetrical. A horizontal plane, theatrical expressions, carefully staged and performed gestures. Haven’t we seen this somewhere else?

Indubitably, Roast in Mendiolaza, Córdoba, Argentina (2001), by Argentinean photographer Marcos López, depends on recognition. Indeed, one could even invoke Roland Barthes and say that recognition is the piece’s punctum: the defining detail of the work is not the central figure, or his eyes, or his knife; in fact, it is the work’s very familiarity. The meaning of López’s photograph comes from our own cultural knowledge, from its place within the system of social and cultural codes that are part of our collective memory. To paraphrase Henri Bergson, our perception of López’s image is not simply the result of our mind’s contact with the photograph: rather, it is impregnated with memory-images — knowledge we already have — which complete and interpret López’s image. In other words, Roast in Mendiolaza is not only a photograph but also an erratic multitude of remembered elements which finalise the photograph. As Bergson says, “every perception is already memory; practically, we perceive only the past.”

According to post-structuralist thinkers like Roland Barthes or Michel Foucault, an image is not under the artist’s control but is instead determined by reference to other images or signs. We see what we see in López’s image because we remember, because of our cultural and social knowledge, because of other images. Our highly contaminated visual understanding of images makes us see something else in López’s photograph. Furthermore, we do not only see Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece in López’s photograph but also all the images, movies, books and popular iconography which have reenacted da Vinci’s The Last Supper. Does this show a lack of originality in López’s work? Nothing could be further from the truth.

One might argue that López’s image alludes only to da Vinci’s The Last Supper. But is da Vinci’s painting not allusive in itself? Da Vinci depicts the events recorded in the writings of the evangelists, namely those of Jesus’ final celebratory meal the day before he was crucified. These events were themselves an enactment of an old Israelite tradition, Passover, which in turn alludes to the exodus of the Israelite nation, led by Moses, from Egypt. In this spiral of allusions to allusions, the concept of the original is diluted by its own multiplicity and merges with our memory-images and social-historical codes.

Of what then is López’s photograph an echo, if anything? Da Vinci’s The Last Supper? The Bible? A real event? A traditional celebration? The exodus of a nation? The truth is that by reenacting da Vinci’s painting the photograph contains an echo of all of these things. Of course, there is a visual connection between da Vinci’s painting and López’s photograph, but the image is also an expression of the political, social, cultural and economic situation in Argentina today. Indeed, some people saw in López’s photograph an echo of the crisis in December 2001 in which a workers’ revolt led to the overthrow of the government of President Fernando de la Rúa.

López does not only refer to Argentinean reality but also to more universal concerns of the globalised twenty-first century. His photograph is a symbol of celebration, fraternity, dignity, community, becoming, absence and presence, multiplicity and simplicity, ending and beginning, remembering and forgetting. It is, ultimately, a symbol of who we are. As López himself has said, his Christ wonders what to do, how to go on and what it is all for. Just as we do.