Leandro Katz (born 1938) is an
Argentine-born writer, visual artist and filmmaker known primarily for his films and photographic installations. His works include long-term, multi-media projects that delve into Latin American history through a combination of scholarly research, anthropology, photography, moving images and printed texts.
Katz's notable long-term works include The Catherwood Project, a photographic reconstruction of the two 1850s expeditions of
John Lloyd Stephens and
Frederick Catherwood to the Maya areas of Central America and Mexico, Project For The Day You'll Love Me, which investigates the events around the capture and execution of
Che Guevara in
Bolivia in 1967, Paradox which deals with Central American archaeology and the banana plantations of the
United Fruit Company in Honduras and Guatemala, Vortex, which addresses the social and literary history of the rubber industry in the Amazon region of the Putumayo River based on a report by
Roger Casement, and Tania, Masks and Trophies, a project that examines the figure of Tamara Bunke, the only woman who fought together with Che Guevara in his last campaign of 1967.[1][2]
Other works
Leandro Katz has produced many books and artists’ books and eighteen narrative and
non-narrative films. His most recent books, Natural History, and The Ghosts of Ñancahuazú, were published in 2010. His artist's book dealing with matters of time and daily life, S(h)elf Portrait, was published in Buenos Aires in 2008.[3] In 2019, he published Bedlam Days: The Early Plays of Charles Ludlam and The Ridiculous Theatrical Company with over 200 never-before-seen photographs of Ludlam's avant garde plays of the 60s and 70s, and with extended quotations from "Queer Theatre" by Stefan Brecht.[4]
Recent exhibitions include Encuentros de Pamplona 72: fin de fiesta del arte experimental,
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Natural History, Henrique Faría Gallery, NY, Imán-New York,
Fundacion Proa, Buenos Aires, 10,000 Lives –
Gwangju Biennale, South Korea, Leandro Katz: Arrebatos, Diagonales y Rupturas (Raptures, Diagonals and Ruptures), Espacio Fundación Telefónica, Buenos Aires, a retrospective with films and installations from 1965 to 2013, curated by Bérénice Reynaud, and Leandro Katz | obras (Works and Alphabets), Herlitzka+Faria, Buenos Aires, Argentina.[10]El Rastro de la Gaviota – (The Seagull’s Footprint),
Tabacalera, curated by Berta Sichel, Madrid 2017.[11] Getty Museum – Photography in Argentina 1850-2010 The J.Paul Getty Museum, curated by Idurre Alonso and Judy Keller, Los Angeles, California 2017. Proyecto para el día que me quieras y la danza de fantasmas - (Project for the day you'll love me and the ghost dance) -Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo - MUAC, Mexico City, 2018,[12] and Fundación Proa, Buenos Aires, curated by Cuauhtémoc Medina, Amanda de la Garza, and Cecilia Rabossi. Chosen Memories: Contemporary Latin American Art from the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Gift and Beyond The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2023,[13] curated by Inés Katzenstein.
Filmography
CROWD 7X7 (1976) 16mm., 20 min., color, silent.
LOS ANGELES STATION (1976) 16mm., 10 min., color, silent.
Katz, Leandro, The Ghosts of Ñancahuazu (Based on Freddy Alborta's photographs of Che Guevara) with texts by Eduardo Grüner, John Berger, Jean Franco, Mariano Mestman and Jeffrey Skoller - Bilingual edition, Viper's Tongue Book, 2010.
ISBN978-9872458119
Sackner, Marvin and Sackner, Ruth, The Art of Typewriting - Thames & Hudson, 2015.
ISBN978-0500241493
Katz, Leandro and Lerner, Jesse, The Catherwood Project: Incidents of visual reconstructions and other matters - University of New Mexico Press,2018.
ISBN978-0826358493
Katz, Leandro, Bedlam Days: The Early Plays of Charles Ludlam and The Ridiculous Theatrical Company (with texts from “Queer Theater” by Stefan Brecht) Viper's Tongue Books, 2019.
ISBN978-987-24581-3-3
Katz, Leandro, Los Danzantes Paradiso Ediciones, Colección Narrativa, 2022.
ISBN978-987-4170-64-4