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Cássio
Vasconcellos has been roving Sao Paulo's deserted
public buildings and industrial landscapes at night,
using his car lights or a flashlight for illumination
as he shoots SX-70 photographs. They are the points
of departure for his finished product, 9 x 13-inch
digital transfer prints on Lumijet paper. |
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A skilled
photographer, a careful observer, and a student of
the urban environment (most particularly that of Sao
Paulo), Vasconcellos arrived at this ethereal format
after recording the environment in more traditional
fashions. He started to photograph when he was 15
years old and has been fascinated by the Polaroid
SX-70 camera since his childhood. "My father
acquired this camera in about 1973, when I was eight
years old. Can you imagine the fascination of a child
at seeing a photo 'spit' out of a machine with a completely
different and innovative esthetic, and seeing the
image appear before his eyes like magic? Add to this
the characteristic sound, which is still pleasing
to me today. It is certainly one of the great inventions
of the twentieth century. Its advantages are the colors
and textures which differ from conventional photographic
processes."
A first
encounter with Vasconcellos' "Nocturnes"
series is both alluring and disconcerting. These are
night visions of Sao Paulo, Brazil, one of the world's
largest urban centers. All are taken from unexpected
angles and are saturated with glorious color. The
visual information in the photographs is carefully
edited resulting, in part, in an artistic charting
of the engineering and architecture of the contemporary
megalopolis. Buildings magically appear to be space
ships as in "Memorial de America Latina #5,"
or menacing giants as in "Citibank #1."
There are never any people in this city, a reflection
of the twentieth century Italian painter De Chirico's
influence. |
