Marcel Giró

Vintage Fotografia Moderna

August 2023

Luciana Brito Galeria and Isabel Amado Fotografia are presenting "Vintage Fotografia Moderna", featuring photographs by Ademar Manarini, Gaspar Gasparian, Geraldo de Barros, Gertrudes Altschul, Marcel Giró, Paulo Pires and Thomaz Farkas. The show is part of the programming for the 4th edition of the Arte Circuito Jardim Europa and pays homage to modern photography, more precisely to those who ushered Brazilian photography into contemporaneity, back in the 1940s and 1950s, transforming the practice through their search for new forms of representation. Curated by Eder Chiodetto, the event will be held on August 19, World Photography Day, and consists of a joint effort by eight galleries with the aim of boosting visitation by offering free-of-charge shuttle service by vans between all the galleries on the circuit throughout the entire day, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

The starting point for this transition from traditional pictorial photography to modern photography was the investigation into Brazilian identity based on a genuinely national aesthetics, as seen in the works shown here by Geraldo de Barros, Paulo Pires, Gaspar Gasparian and Thomaz Farkas. The “harsh” light of the midday sun, the dry climate, the sea and fishermen compose some of the themes explored in that phase. Paulo Pires was likewise dedicated to investigating new ways to create images. So much so, that he built an analog photographic enlarger based on his profound knowledge of mechanical engineering, creating a unique procedure for solarizing his images. This allowed him to avert the negative and transform white into black, shifting the traditional pictorial concept of that era and contributing toward a new conception of photography.

For their part, the images by Ademar Manarini, Marcel Giró and Gertrudes Altschul, in this case examples of the modern phase, are the result of experiments with textures, shadows, the plasticity of objects, the solarization of negatives, superpositions of images, etc., which helped to conceive new possibilities, guiding the frame of reference toward abstraction. And, last but not least, based on a symbolic representation, the works of the Sobras series, by Geraldo de Barros, consist precisely of a combination of these two moments. That series was Geraldo de Barros’s last investigation, in which he uses fragments of photographs gathered over the course of his career. Geraldo de Barros spearheaded the modernist phase of photography in Brazil, based on his Fotoformas, but he also conducted research based on figurative concepts.