Page 103 - ARTE!Brasileiros #48

was very focused on understanding these processes of violence, not only from the past he later turned away. Currently the photographer recognizes “a certain ‘ hardness ‘ in
but from the present. And very quickly for me this present violence began to show its Cartier–Bresson that bothers me today, but it was important in my photographic education.”
nuances coming from behind. And in the case of Rio, I have no doubt that the fact that Moreira graduated from Mackenzie University in Economics and opted for photography
the military police kill on average a thousand people a year has to do with this culture in 1964, abandoning the economy.
that comes from the dictatorship. In fact, what you see there is also a result of the Known for its analogical photos in black and white, produced in cities where he went, on
impunity implemented by the Portuguese when they arrived in Brazil, slavery, and after the walls of Espaço Cultural Porto Seguro are also exposed 250 unpublished photos of
the military dictatorship. The fact that the Brazilian police is a military police, the one his color and digital phases. Divided into cores, the exhibition gathers from the photos
that dies the most and kills the world, does not come from yesterday, but from 500 years. from the beginning of the career to recent digital images. Carlos Moreira has exhibited
in Paris (1983), Washington (1986) and New York (1988). His photos are in collections
There is a much present discussion in the artistic universe today about how visual like the Pompidou.
arts can also be a potent device for dealing with history. How do you see this question? Also interesting are their technical choices, at this time where the dizzying technological
I think that even in academia today there is a growing concern to treat things also outside transition that has been blowing us for decades, in addition to the said progress, provokes
the text, using visual language for that. And I realized that with Condor. In using images to also discussions where neither icons are spared. Recently Sebastião Salgado provoked
address this subject, I quickly began to be contacted by teachers and academics, and to buzz on social networks by shooting that, for him the “images from celular phones are
be called to lecture on the subject. I think he began to understand better, 200 years after not photography”.
the emergence of photography, the power of visual and the contributions he can make The work of Carlos Moreira comes to light through cameras and techniques chosen in
even to the academy, whether in a documentary approach or more artistic, poetic, freer. a healthy eclectic manner.
Do you believe that art, and more specifically photography, can have some restorative He shoots with Leicas, analogical and digital, with the very practical Canon Powershot
virtue? I mean, for victims of violence as well as for society, can jobs like this that you and also with the even fewer complex celular phones. His photos are printed in black and
do have a healing role, too? white, in color and on various media that include even Cicero and Moleskine notebooks.
I don’t know, maybe it’s too pretentious or utopian to think this way. I don’t think an image And in this is important the phrase included in the expography of the show:
itself will heal, heal, or give justice to anyone. But I think that it can contribute, like text, “... It is clear that for him the heart of photography is not in the device itself, but in what
painting and music, to some kind of justice, reparation and better welfare for the victims. he provides to the artist in his relationship with the world.
And, also, more uneasiness for the guilty, that when they see themselves portrayed they
may be able to rethink what their actions were, to realize the consequences of what they did.
EXHIBITION SÃO PAULO | PAGES 72 TO 74
EXHIBITIONS PHOTOGRAPHY | PAGES 68 TO 71 SÉRGIO SISTER AND HIS
HALF A CENTURY OF RECORDS RESISTANCE WEAPONS

ON THE WALLS OF THE ESPAÇO CULTURAL PORTO SEGURO, 400 PHOTOS
COMPOSED CARLOS MOREIRA’S RETROSPECTIVE THE AUSTERE AND RIGOROUS WORKS THAT SISTER PRODUCES TODAY KEEP,
FROM THE PAINTINGS AND DRAWINGS OF HIS EARLY PERIOD, THE SAME FORCE.
BY HELIO CAMPOS MELLO
BY TADEU CHIARELLI
THE RETROSPECTIVA Carlos Moreira – Wrong so Well occupies three floors in the Porto
Seguro Cultural space, in a torrential caught from the work of the artist who was also a The timely exhibition by Sérgio Sister at the Galeria Nara Roesler in São Paulo ( until
teacher of photography. As such, he attended the School of Communication and Arta October 5), featuring paintings he made in the late 1960s and drawings produced in prison
at the University of São Paulo (ECA/USP) from 1971 to 1974 and, again, in 1979 to 1990. between 1970 and 1971. Timely for at least two reasons: firstly, in those days when they try
In 1990 he created the school of photography M2 Studio, along with Regina Martins who to deny the misdeeds committed by the latter Brazilian civil–military dictatorship (some
today integrates the team of curator of the exhibition. of which seek to deny that it has in fact occurred), it is didactic to put the public before
The title, Wrong so Well, comes from an annotation made by the artist among his digital the testimonies of victims of that period that will never be erased from the country’s
photos: “I like when you do it right. But I like much more when you do it wrong so well “. history; A second reason for the relevance of the exhibition is that it presents the first
Moreira is dedicated to authorial photography, street photography, travel photography. two moments of the trajectory of a very young artist (Sister was born in 1945) and that,
His photos are taken with great care, sensitivity and pleasure. over the years, would be recognized as one of the main references of painting. in Brazil.
The building of Porto Seguro in the neighborhood of Campos Eliseos, which houses the Visiting Imagens de uma juventude Pop: pinturas políticas e desenhos da cadeia and chain
exposition, has already become one of the important centers of art in São Paulo and the drawings, which at first draw attention are the differences in plastic approaches used by
show of Carlos Moreira is the most recent of the 16 exhibitions presented there, series Sister in paintings and drawings.
that began with Grandes Mestres –Leonardo, Michelangelo and Rafael, who inaugurated In the first group it is amazing the liveliness that emanates from those paintings that,
the space at the beginning of 2016. aware of the buzz of the metropolis, the scourges of mass society and the dangers of
There are about 400 photos in this retrospective, chosen by the curators Fábio Furtado, dictatorship (which gradually showed its face), demonstrate the belief in pictorial doing,
Regina Martins and Rodrigo Villela – who is executive and artistic director of Espaço believe in what report and how they report. In them it is remarkable how Sister – like
Cultural Porto Seguro –, in a curatorial work that began in January and plunged into the some of his generation colleagues – could filter and make them his own, the then most
archives of more than 50 years of the photographer’s work. fashionable strand codes (the Pop, the New Figuration, etc.), all riddled with a kind of
For the curators the “exhibition was born in front of some considerable challenges yet country architecture. plastic – that can be associated with the structure of the comics
wonderful... More than 150,000 colorful frames were inventoried–unpublished images pages – nothing takes me out of my mind that could be equally debited to the concrete
that can now be seen by the public for the first time. The black–and–white part, although experience, still strong in São Paulo at the time (perhaps the same debt of Claudio Tozzi,
already catalogued and previously organized, represents another 80.000 frames, in his early productions).
approximately. If we add to that its digital production, since the beginning of the years This strong conception, however, liquefies itself in the drawings produced by Sister
2000 to date, the volume at least doubles. Not to mention the delightful risk of having a during his time in the old Tiradentes Prison in São Paulo, with a sad memory. If in the
new and extraordinary sequence of images made by Carlos every day, during the process. “. immediately preceding paintings there was a kind of affirmation of the discourse, a
Born in São Paulo in 1936, Carlos Moreira began photographing at the beginning of the youthful voluntarism full of liveliness and irony, in the acute drawings made in prison,
sixties when he enchanted himself with Henry Cartier–Bresson and whose influence the architecture of the scenes tends to fade away, leaking in the corners (in this sense,

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