A Parallelism Between Divination, Dowsing, and Photography

Argentinian photographer Sergio Dominguez combines archival images and new work to create a semi-fictional narrative that explores the mystical practice of dowsing while questioning the photographic medium itself.

Argentinian photographer Sergio Dominguez combines archival images and new work to create a semi-fictional narrative that explores the mystical practice of dowsing while questioning the photographic medium itself.

According to the Spanish Royal Academy, a Zahorí is a person that has the gift of discovering what is hidden. Employing simple elements, such as a pendulum, it is said they can detect radiations or magnetic fluxes emitted by entities.

Between the limits of document and fiction, “The Zahorí” continues the research that Hugo Caro started back in the '60s, through his photographs and instruments of dowsing.

This connection between the physical and the spiritual world raises some questions about the nature of the photographic image: Is there a link between the photograph and the person who is photographed? Is the damage (or the cure) of the representation transferred to the represented? Does any of the referent remain in the photographic image?

Science denies these practices and relationships, but perhaps, as Borges said, in the architecture of the universe there are unreasonable cracks that we cannot explain.

Words and Pictures by Sergio Dominguez.

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Sergio Dominguez is an Argentinian photographer. Since 2010 he works as a professor at the Center for Photographic

Studies. In 2018 he published his first photobook "Fulminación". His work has been exhibited in Latin America and Europe. Find him on PHmuseum and Instagram.

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This feature is part of Story of the Week, a selection of relevant projects from our community handpicked by the PHmuseum curators.

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