Photography Day: 5 photographers you need to know
History of Photography
Photography emerged in the 19th century, a period in which painting and sculpture were the major forms of expression. The engraving technique already existed, however it had a secondary role, due to its reproduction mechanism. Photography as an artistic expression is fertile in the avant-garde, due to the Bauhaus and its non-hierarchical conception of artistic techniques. This factor with the pictorialist movement - creation of painting with photography - gave her the opportunity to enter the artistic world.
From the 1970s onwards, with a greater incidence in the 1980s, the camera invaded the territory of Art, that is, cultural spaces such as museums and galleries, thus leaving practically in the background the documentary aspect of the representation of reality. While in the artistic world there was a certain uncertainty about this new machine, in the area of communication it was received as a great ally. In this way, the newspapers managed to have images of the events instead of simple illustrations. To celebrate World Photography Day, P55 presents in this article five artists who have transformed the world art scene through their photographic representations.
In the last five decades, the multidisciplinarity of the work ofJulião Sarmento addressed topics such as eroticism, sexuality, literature or cinema. At the same time, he questioned the concepts of desire, absence, time and language through different means (painting, drawing, sculpture, collages, installation, video, performance and photography). In this last area, the Portuguese artist has been expressing himself through a singular universe that is very personal, very rich and always available for the plurality of eyes and thoughts.
American Landscape 8 inJulião Sarmento
Noronha da Costa marked the history of Portuguese art with its ability to constantly dialogue with the images of painting, cinema and photography. The sea, a fundamental part of his life, was repeatedly highlighted in his work, through paintings with his famous spray technique but also in photography. The landscape is an integral part of his artistic career and is therefore recurrent in his portraits.
“Noronha da Costa continued in painting the experiences of the sea when it fell on the land, and made use of his already ancient daring, that form of classic laziness, but also of the sea as a romantic figure, as the last confessor of so many cursed characters, those who they wash away the indigestion of life, after having landed there with a supernatural hunger.”
Marines inNoronha da Costa
The Portuguese photographerPedro Narra has traveled the world capturing photographs of natural life. From New Zealand to Rwanda, from Australia to Guinea-Bissau, the Portuguese artist shows the beauty of the animals that inhabit these territories in a unique way. Its path began with the dolphins of the Sado and more recently carried out in the same place, the collection wild on the plants involved in the walks and between the stones. in an interviewPedro Narra mentioned about this collection: “I gave them the highlight, the beauty, that I thought I should give them.”His works have won several awards, such as those developed on the island of Poilão, in the Bijagós archipelago, which won third prize in the SOS Endangered Species category - Photo reportage in the 5th edition of the Nature Images Awards 2015 competition - a series of photographs about the conservation work for green turtles in that Guinea-Bissau archipelago.
From the Wild Collection inPedro Narra
Photography has been the creative way ofRafa Fernández expose the reality around you. Intoxicated by the elegance and glamor of 1950s American documentary art, Rafa Fernández presents a series of timeless black and white photographs, with unpredictable scenarios about the culture and people in Tokyo. Interested in the traits of the lives that make up this city, his works tend to make the viewer find tranquility in preconceived images of the chaotic city of Tokyo, altered by movement, lights and noise. His works reveal the ephemeral and the spontaneous, eventually crossing borders by allowing the viewer to know a little more about this great metropolis so different from Western cities.
the spanish artistLluís Estopiñan has produced works of art based on photography that are involved in other elements such as abstract painting or installation. His works around memory and consciousness tend to reflect emotions in order to convey the ways in which art can profoundly transform the viewer.
“Lluís Estopiñan compose some themes that, between fantasy and symbolism, recreate suggestions that, starting with letting the imagination run wild, aim to bring us closer to the forms in which life is concrete, whether through biological and geological worlds or in relation to personal reflections on unfathomables metaphysical concepts... opening a reading, in each work, from which you can glimpse his sensitivity towards a proposal he has about life and creation. To achieve such results, the painter works with an abundance of pigmentations and glazes in which, in acrylic or collage, achieve chromatisms, luminosities and chiaroscuros that are very valid for their plastic and aesthetic contexts. Tonal textures that allow the
Lluís Estopiñan developing reflections, feelings and metaphors is up to an attractive, mysterious and ambiguous pictorial scheme.”
Disclosed_Memory_33 inLluís Estopiñan