Enlightened

O projeto “Iluminados – personagens da Ilha de Santa Catarina” recebeu o FUNARTE Marc Ferrez Photography Award in 2012. It was exhibited in 2013 at the Museu de Arte de Santa Catarina, in Florianópolis SC,south of Brazil, curated by Denise Camargo.

Veja abaixo o making of por Felipe Queriquelli e o texto da curadora.

Texto da curadora

It was the exercise of self-portrait that made this Enlightened by Zé Paiva emerge. From posing for himself, he gets up from a chair – which belonged to his great-grandmother – to photograph these people who, like him, are characters from the Island of Santa Catarina. After all, this gaucho has been in Santa Catarina for thirty years and already shares local knowledge.

Zé Paiva composes with trails of light. They are the ones who illuminate the stories of these men and women marked by their professions. Ecstatic for the necessary time, they allow themselves to be portrayed. In other words, they are all immersed and complicit in the temporality of the flashlight photography.

The character and photographer take turns in the brushstrokes that make up a delicate painting, a mixture of technique and expressiveness. And, between poses and scenes, they highlight the nature of the people and their things.

They propose a fair game between objectivity and subjectivity, on the border between document and fiction. They are indigenous heritages learned by Azorean immigrants, such as the technology of cassava flour and the making of the single-wood canoe, carved from garapuvu wood, the tree that is the symbol of Florianópolis – a true piece of “caiçara" engineering.

Zé Paiva, who exchanged engineering for photography, excavates the imaginations of musicians, cooks, artisans, fishermen, and healers and synthesizes them into a single image; he reveals a landscape for their eyes and offers it to ours.

He explores the landscape-pose of his subjects, as simple as the slippers they wear, as dignified as the firmness of their working feet, as powerful as the hands that built stories and identities.

This photograph by Zé Paiva is not just for mere contemplation. It brings a heritage to preserve. Participating in this harvest, which, moreover, earned him the XII Funarte Marc Ferrez Photography Award 2012, is a pleasure for which I thank this luminous photographer.

Denise Camargo, curator

2013 autumn