Focus on Brazil: Press Stop, Rewind and Play

To be able to present a panorama of contemporary photography in Brazil we need to analyze a bit of its history. Every era has its influence on Art, and specially here, where Photography has played an important role on the construction and deconstruction of the identity of the country.

Since the first daguerreotype arrived in Rio in the XIX century, Photography helped creating an imaginary of Brazil as a territory dominated by nature and the white man. Besides, it helped in developing a national feeling of belonging which played an important role at the time of colonization.

Did you know that Photography was invented in Brazil?

Indeed, one of the pioneer of Photography was a french painter and inventor named Antoine Hercules Romuald Florence. A few years before Nicéphore Niépce, the young adventurer and artist used the same process as Nièpce to reproduce drawings in a dark room during an expedition in Amazon where he was studying birds to create an inventory of animal sounds, the “zoophonie”.

He used for the very first time the word “Photographie” but curiously very few books talk about this episode of the history of Photography. Why? It may be because he was abroad and far from the academic structure. Time and space were, and still are, important factors in the development of Photography at that time and the isolation of Hercules Florence made him lose the opportunity to be famous worldwide. We had to wait for the abbot Louis Compte to bring the first Daguerreotype in Rio in 1840 to the emperor. The Photography enthusiast, emperor Dom Pedro II, was a key figure as regards the democratization of photography in Brazil during the XIX century.

It became a tool for geographic and anthropological study, more than a pursuit of theoretical and aesthetic research. By documenting the country and its inhabitants, Photographers started creating a visual and cultural identity of the brazilian territory dominated by the point of view of the colon. In the 50's, the expansion of photography as a document which attest the reality was due to the impulse generated by the newspapers such a O Cruzeiro and Jornal do Brasil which valorized photographs in their publications. This historical background has influenced a whole generation of photographers, for the most famous ones Claudia Andújar, Miguel Rio Branco, Nair Benedicto and of course Sebastião Salgado. And that is how photojournalism started as the dominant genre in Photography in Brazil.

Nowadays, photojournalism is still one of the most represented style in exhibitions and festivals. Perhaps curators wants to preserve this image of a wild and mysterious empire dominated by Man. I would say it is part of a School to which curators and the market of art are tied to.

Nevertheless , if you really look to drown yourself into the underground art scene, hidden in the digital world or some independent galleries, or even in some zine festivals, you will find some pearls of conceptual and street photography. It is never an easy task to gather young names of artists, there is not as many call for projects as in Europe or the U.S, young artists seem not to be considered as good bet for the market and the lack of pedagogic structure specialized in Photography creates a disturbing superficiality in some projects. Fortunately, the continue increase of initiatives - as the Zum grant for young photographers, Foto em Pauta call for projects, the workshops organized by Madalena Centro de Estudos da Imagem, the festivals such as FIF dedicated to International Contemporary Photography and the groups of reflexion organized by some curators like Ateliê Foto, in the aim to share experiences and references - help young photographers to get less and less isolated.

I believe that the confinement of the artist, consequence of the hugeness of the country, is what makes collectives here so important, it is a way for artists to meet and speak about what they are doing, it helps in creating bigger projects and allow them to get trusted by institutions which provide funds to execute it.

More than before, Photography is part of the artistic scene and the production of 'on site' images is not the main aspect of the medium anymore. It has become a fertile field for research and development thought. Theoretical reflections, social and political questions are in the center of contemporary artist's researches. Despite of the social crisis which began in 2013 with the demonstrations against the increase of buses' fare, the protests against the world cup and more lately the attempt of impeachment of the president, photographers took advantage of this scenario to changed the way they want to show their daily life and the way that the world is looking at them. The camera's holder has changed and its point of view as well.

So to conclude, Contemporary Photography in Brazil is an interesting and extended network of crossed visions. On one hand, collectives of photographers, such as Garapa, SelvaSP and Mídia-Ninja, from the most well-known, discuss a certain vision of Brazilian society and its operation. On the other hand, independent artists try to question a multifaceted world with a more conceptual research on image and archives of the Brazilian history and the infinite possibilities of interpretations.

In my opinion several visions are always better than just one, so for this “Focus on Brazil” I chose four guest writers to talk about a selection of artists who are changing the paradigms of Photography in Brazil. Some of them make their path looking at the future while some of them travel in the layers of time that Photography provides, digging into the past to find answers in the present.

Let me introduce you to my dream team:

Coletivo Ágata, a multidisciplinary collective which explores the notion of “creative process" in order to create action tools in the context of contemporary Art. The members, who came from different backgrounds, act on several fronts, including criticism and curating, production of content and authorship work. I invited the collective to write an essay about the presence of photography collectives in Brazil by starting from their own experience and letting us know about what kind of doors this opens and what kind of doors it may close.

Elsa Sereia-Leydier, french photographer graduated from Ecole National Supérieure de la Photographie in Arles, currently based in Rio de Janeiro. She is interested in the concept of representation of identities and territories, especially in the latin-american continent. She will make an interview with Jonathas de Andrade a young artist from Recife and will ask him about the semantic ambiguities he creates in his work with his accurate use of words combined with photography.

Renata Scovino, visual artist and researcher graduated in visual programming and Arts, was redactor at Urbanautica.com and specialized in book reviews and critical essays on the Brazilian photography scene. Her multidisciplinary work is focused on deconstruction and relations. As a guest redactor, she will present for the Focus on Brazil, a book review of “Cabanagem” from the artist André Penteado, a book about one of the biggest Brazilian revolution against the colons that happened in the XIX century in the north of the country and ended up with a massive genocide.

Wikus de Wet, freelance photographer based in Cape town, South Africa, is a founding member of Twenty Journey. Specialized in photojournalism and documentary photography  will be in charge of an interview with a very promising Brazilian photojournalist, Pedro Silveira.

Finally, I will introduce you to a selection of artists that has caught my attention during the past year and share the same concern on the power of image and its ambiguity of lecture.

I wish that with my invited writers we would be able to open a little crack in the surface of this singular art scene.

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