Category: color photography

Parallel Worlds—an exploration of poetics through photographic diptychs

color photography, diptych

Much like Leandra (one of the most symbolic “invisible cities” imagined by Italo Calvino in his book of the same name), cities are defined not by their architecture or geography, but by the coexistence of spirits—those domestic spirits tied to the memories of families and homes, and those associated with newcomers, displacements, and transformations.
Cities are also formed by layers of memory, affections, customs, and presences accumulated over time.
According to Calvino, urban identity arises from this unstable balance between what endures and what transforms.
………………………….
A diptych from a forthcoming photography book titled Parallel Worlds—an exploration of poetics through photographic diptychs.

For my photography projects centered on memory, territory, and the reinterpretation of landscapes, the city of Leandra offers a particularly rich interpretive key: the photographs can reveal not only what is present in the landscape but also the invisible traces of past occupations and the possibilities of futures yet to unfold.
In this sense, Leandra is a city of superimposed memories and invisible presences that continue to inhabit these places, even when they can no longer be seen.

color photography

[territory of passage]

There was a city where people passed one another without ever stopping: they shared the same sidewalk, the same subway entrance, the same noises, and the same walls covered in graffiti.

Each face appeared for only an instant, like an interrupted sentence. Anyone watching that street corner for hours would believe they were seeing the same city; anyone returning days later would discover that none of the people were the same. The city existed precisely in that movement: an endless succession of encounters that never actually took place.

The invisible city lies not in the architecture or the graffiti, but in the fleeting flow of possible connections.
………………………………….
(inspiration: Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities)
photos: polyptych featuring 8 street photos, NYC, 2017

[my day by edward hopper]

color photography, Street photography

My Day by Edward Hopper (1882-1967) (USA; painter, graphic artist and illustrator).
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All that was missing was a restaurant on the corner, with a few customers and a waiter, to better characterize the reality marked by Hopper’s loneliness as in his beautiful and world-famous painting Nighthawks (1942; 84.1×152.4cm).

photo: São Carlos, SP Brazil from the windshield of my car in the rain. 2022.

Amazon: THEY ARE DESTROYING YOU FOR MONEY

color photography

photo: Upper Solimões River – July 1991

IN HONOR OF THE ARBOR DAY (in Brasil): this tree in the photo, on the left bank of the Solimões River, is a NOTABLE TREE: it is on the nautical charts of the Amazon.

I had the good fortune and privilege of visiting various parts of the Brazilian Amazon Region for over 40 years as a professor and researcher in the environmental area (Environmental Chemistry and Biogeochemistry) at UFSCar (São Carlos SP campus).
I express my deep concern and sadness at the progressive destruction of the forest, lakes, rivers, paranás, and igapós that affects thousands of human beings who depend on them.
I wonder when we will have a solution to these almost countless problems, but I remain (sadly) skeptical of an EFFECTIVE SOLUTION in the short, medium, or long term.

[red poppy of palestine]

color photography, photomontage

Think of the children of Palestine, living orphans
Born orphans, with no future and nothing
Others massacred by bloodthirsty drones and missiles,
Murdered without mercy
From hunger, thirst and bullets
Think of your decapitated limbs
Their broken hearts
Wounds like red poppies
Dried, faded in a dry vase, on a table in a corner of the house
Broken
On some corner that no longer exists
Broken

Don’t forget the red poppy
From the red poppy of Palestine
The same color as spilled blood
Never forget the dried, faded red poppy
Stained with blood
Abandoned
No petals, no red
With nothing

{reconstructing Nineteen Eighty-Four}

color photography, photomontage

Reconstructing Michael Radford’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four” (1984) from George Orwell’s glorious book of the same name (1948).

The photomontages are of scenes from the film that I have just re-watched for the ‘n’th time and I photographed the TV screen that overlaps photos of me of Usina São Carlos (sugar and alcohol plant) (Jaboticabal SP Brazil) during the period when it was being demolished already 2-3 years ago.

{Amazon Hylea}

color photography

The Amazon Hyleia, as defined by Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1659).
Photo of a lake on the banks of the Rio Negro taken in 1991.
This image will appear in my exhibition ‘MINHA PITTORESCA AMAZÔNIA’ at the UFOP Arts and Convention Center in Tiradentes, MG, from March 7-11, 2024.

You are more than invited!!!

P.S.: TIP – this image can be (much) better appreciated in its entirety in full screen and horizontally.