Category: New topographics

“MAKE IT NEW”

landscape photography, New topographics, Photography

“MAKE IT NEW” (Ezra Pound – 1885–1972)

This phrase, so to speak, refers to Ezra Pound’s modernist imperative in his eponymous 1934 collection of essays.

This ‘slogan’ urges the writer to create from the material of the artwork that is distinctly innovative.

The idea behind this ‘slogan’ is, for me, fully desirable in photography.

[place and memory in photography: the beauty of time; the passage of time]

landscape photography, New topographics

The great US photographer William Christenberry (1936-2016) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Christenberry) once said (https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2010/oct/03/myth) -manners-and-memory-review): “I don’t want my work to be thought of in terms of nostalgia. It’s a matter of place and sense of place. I’m not looking back with nostalgia for the past, but for the beauty of time and the passage of time.”

I echo the words of William Christenberry. These are the same reasons that motivate me to take photographs of buildings – many of them old and/or abandoned –, objects and landscapes from the interior of the state of São Paulo and other parts of the interior of Brazil.

[new topographics of são paulo state, brasil]

landscape photography, New topographics, Photography, Uncategorized

I understand that these photos show the tremendous strength that the sugar and alcohol (ethanol) industry has in Brazil, especially in the interior of the state of São Paulo.


But – it seems to me that there is always a but or more than one – it is a type of industrial activity that, although it has improved a lot in terms of negative environmental impact in recent decades, still causes environmental impacts and many of them are still unknown and difficult to be properly evaluated.


But, in life, we often look at certain issues from the lyrical side and I want to focus my attention on this aspect of what I do and see these photos that I take, even though I can’t get rid of the memory of the aforementioned social and environmental impacts.

[four_gasoline_stations]

landscape photography, New topographics, Photography

[new topographies from the interior of the state of são paulo-brasil]

note1: I have photographed in small towns in the interior of the state of São Paulo, Brazil, deactivated, abandoned gas stations, some of them, in ruins, where one does not see a ‘living soul’ as I said, the other day, by a spirited one (in the look) friend. Perhaps you may see the spirit of the old owners, their good and faithful customers wandering around…..LOL…

note2: I like gas stations; I like the smell of gasoline. In small towns in Brazil, the connection between people and gas stations is something important which is, to me, something difficult to explain. Many of them, in these small towns, help to tell the story of these places.

“Photography is memory and is confused with it” (Boris Kossoy).