Você fala Português ou Brazilianês?: photography

Saturday, February 21, 2015

THAT FROZEN MOMENT IN FABULOUS PHOTOGRAPHY

Sebastião Salgado is the Brazilian photographer whose nightmarish pictures of teeming, dirt-swamped gold miners electrified the world's media in the mid-1980s. Now 70, Salgado has had his life story told by the joint force of his own son Juliano and Wim Wenders, and it's a story that has turned out to have its own uplifting dynamic and character arc.

For the last 40 years, the photographer has been travelling through the continents, from gold mines, through the Sahel and the Gulf war oil fires, and into the death-frenzy of mid-90s Rwanda in the footsteps of an ever-changing humanity. He has witnessed some of the major events of our recent history; international conflicts, starvation and exodus. He is now embarking on the discovery of pristine territories, of wild fauna and flora, and of grandiose landscapes as part of a huge photographic project which is a tribute to the planet's beauty.

Last Friday, Feb 20., the documentary directed by German Wim Wenders and Juliano Ribeiro Salgado, son of the photographer, won the best documentary of Caesar based on the work of Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado.

EXCERPTS TAKEN FROM VARIETY, THE GUARDIAN

Thursday, August 9, 2012

PHOTOGRAPHY OR PAINTING?

Alexandre Mury works from self-portraits which he relates to readings of cultural and literary icons, painting, sculpture and other references. Photography is the over-all support for these works.

He started with photography at the age of 16 and his work was recently shown in the 2010 exhibition of the collection of Gilberto Chateaubriand at the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro .

Alexandre Mury has a degree in Social Communication (FAFIC - Faculdade de Filosofia de Campos - Campos dos Goytacazes, RJ, Brazil) and was art director in advertising agencies, as well as acting professor of visual communication in three educational centers (FIPH, Faculdades Integradas Padre Humberto, Itaperuna, RJ, Brazil, 2003/2006; CEFET, Centro Federal de Educação Tecnológica de Campos, Campos dos Goytacazes, 2003/2004; FAFIC, Faculdade de Filosofia de Campos, Campos dos Goytacazes, 2003/2004).

He was born in São Fidélis, Rio de Janeiro on January 13,1976 and has drawn and painted since childhood.

His artistic legitimacy as a photographer became established when his work was first included in outstanding private collections of Brazilian art and photography, such as that of Joaquim Paiva (of Rio de Janeiro).

In a playful, intriguing and newly contextualized mode, he endeavours to reconstruct famous eternal themes and to re frame the Classics. Improvisation and allegory closely tie his oeuvre to Brazilian reality by means of a particular vernacular aesthetics that falls well within contemporary mainstream exercises in recycling and rereading.

The Ugly Duchess (also known as A Grotesque Old Woman) is a satirical portrait painted by the Flemish artist Quentin Matsys around 1513.

The choice of materials and personal production of sets, costumes and ambiances reflect his freedom of interpretation and his truly personal rendering of the iconic subject matter pursued in his oeuvre.