SP-Foto 2019

The publication of traço— #2 coincides with SP-Foto 2019, our art fair dedicated exclusively to photography and the image. Here we reflect on the importance of the idea of context as far as the production of photography is concerned in all possible senses: its creation, exhibition, perception, and many others. Images are related both to where they are inserted and where they were originally generated photo-synthetically. Their meanings are in constant transformation in the eyes of a society which is itself in constant transformation.

Gabriel Bogossian, invited curator at the 21^st Biennial of Contemporary Art Sesc_Videobrasil offers an outline of the Indigenous collectives exhibiting at the festival this year. Under the theme of ‘Imagined Communities’, the Biennial brings together several voices in an effort to recontextualize the idea of nationalism. Bogossian offers a detailed profile of the Brazilian native artworks that feature in the exhibition: “Guardiões da memória” [Guardians of Memory] (2018), “Jeguatá — caderno de viagem” [Jeguatá — Travel Notebook] (2018), “About cameras, spirits and occupation: a montage-essay triptych” (2018) and “GRIN” (2016).

Sarah Hermanson Meister, photography curator at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), writes about the renowned Foto Cine Club Bandeirante (FCCB) within the wider context of the production of Latin-American Photo Clubs and, more specifically, in relation to Club Fotográfico de México (CFM). Her essay is a snapshot of the exhibition dedicated to FCCB due to take place at MoMA in 2021. Mariano Klautau Filho, curator and artist, explores the re-utilization of photography in the works of Miguel Rio Branco and Helena Martins-Costa, and the fine line between the documental and the fictional in image-narrative.

Also in this edition, Barbara Tannenbaum, photography curator at the Cleveland Museum of Art, writes about the photographic journey from common object to artwork and its resulting valorization in the art market, and questions how this influences the photographic practice as a whole. And, finally, Thyago Nogueira, curator at Instituto Moreira Salles and editor of the magazine ZUM, selects three emerging photographers to keep an eye on: Aleta Valente (@ex_miss_febem), Aline Motta and Camila Falcão.

Marlos Bakker is in charge of the section — entretraço —, where we invite an artist to intervene in the space of the magazine. The magazine features a development of his video work “SDDS 3404”, in which Bakker builds a documentary from the archive material of a WhatsApp group: BRA SPOTTERS, where several people of different ages and life experiences share their passion for photographing airplanes. For traço—, the artist made a transcription of the number of times the acronym SDDS, a short version of saudade (Portuguese word for longing, or missing someone or something), appears in 15 months of group conversation, creating a new image from the words and feelings behind the airplane photographs.

It is impossible to deny that we are always moving. Sometimes we go forwards, other times we go backwards. Time passes and carries us with it. We use images to mark the real. But how can we qualify the real in a world that never stops moving? The texts presented here are a brief example of the different ways we qualify things by their surroundings and how this qualification is subject to constant transformation. As it should be.

112 pages, 20.8 x 27 cm
Bilingual Portuguese / English