28/08/2018 Fabio Salun
In this brief text, I propose to think some modern trends in Brazilian photography from a technical question and from an aesthetic that seeks in the language itself the modern problems of creation and originality, in short, in the visual displacements proposed by the photographic researches and in the differences established with reality. This search mixes with the creation of photoclubism and above all with the formation of Foto Clube Bandeirantes, which ought to remove the “tone” of document from the photographic image.
Brazil has always been a country sensitive to photography. Herculano Florence, one of the pioneers of photography, resided in the country; Dom Pedro II was a passionate photographer and left a large collection of photographic images about Brazil. The attention to modern photography begins in the twentieth century, more specifically in the 1940s, with the formation of Foto Clube Bandeirantes that brought a new aesthetic concern to the photography produced in Brazil.
Within this group we can start from the work of Thomaz Farkaz. Hungarian who arrived in Brazil at the age of six and has in his collection of images a reflection about the framework and the unusual points of view, as shown in the image of Ipiranga cinema below: its object is not the cinema or the people who attend it , but the drawings that the architecture of the place allows to rethink the visuality that the photographic image can present.
Another Brazilian modern photographer who is characterized by the research in the photographic image was José Yalent, one of the founders of the club. Sensitive geometry and extensive experimentation against light makes his images stand out for innovation and creativity. In his work the shadow becomes object and visual element and it is from her that Yalent constructs much of its poetic reflection as we can perceive in the photograph of architecture below.
Geraldo de Barros reconstructs reality from photomontages of unusual objects and varied themes. The photographer has explored the photographic language within his technical process, rethinking the construction of the photographic object and the photographic process itself. Images that overlap and create a different environment and stand out for their plasticity. A reassembly of the real, a real reconstructed by a shift in the logic of the process of photography.
It is interesting to think that the displacements of Geraldo de Barros do not happen only in the photomontage; his photographs also elevate the thought and the aesthetic reflection in the photographic act. The image below, one of the photoforms, is the projected shadow of a doorknob, an image that does not walk in the common fields of photography as the portrait or the landscape, but which completely displaces the motif and the object of photographic making.
To finish, I would like to cite the work of José Oiticica Filho. The father of Hélio Oiticica has a significant photographic production, although it is little known or commented. His relation with the photography was in an attempt to remove from it all the documentary and figurative referential. In the image below the objects are explored from a transparent surface and with a texture that deforms and reconstructs the objects in a visual opening that bears the creative mind of the artist in a manner similar to painting.
Finally, what I set out was to raise some photographers and trends in modern Brazilian photography that put the problem in the language logic in order to rethink the visuality created by photography. Far from addressing all the modern aperture in Brazilian photography, I relied mainly on the photographers who have presented research directions oriented to the image’s own visuality and which have become a reference to a displaced photograph.
Fábio Salun
Master in Visual Arts by UDESC
fabio.salun@gmail.com
References:
ETCHEVERRY. Carolina Martins. As fotografias experimentais brasileiras nas décadas de 1950-60: Geraldo de Barros e José Oiticica Filho. IV Mostra de Pesquisa da Pós-Graduação PUCRS, 2009. Disponível em: <http://www.pucrs.br/edipucrs/IVmostra/IV_MOSTRA_PDF/Historia/72005-CAROLINA_MARTINS_ETCHEVERRY.pdf>. Acesso em: 2018 jul.
HACKING, Juliet. Tudo sobre fotografia. Tradução de Fabiano Moraes, Fernanda Abreu e Ivo Korytosky. Rio de Janeiro: Sextante, 2012.
MIBELBECK, Reinhold. Fotografia no Século XX. Tradução de Sandra Oliveira. Lisboa: Atelier da Imagem, 1998.
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