The project "The simplification of the landscape" arose within the Artistic Residence, in the Printing Area, BA in Visual Arts - Photography.
The concept of landscape has been undergoing some changes and how we perceive it too. In art, the idea of landscape emerges during the Renaissance period. Over the centuries, and in the course of artistic movements, the concept of landscape and its use are evolving, and in addition to its primitive connection to painting, it extends to literature. Until the 18th century, the concept of landscape was connected directly to the painting, because until then there was no other way of reproduction. This was therefore the purest form to represent the landscape.
The 19th century, is a period marked by the transformations from Modernity. New movements arise with the school of Barbizon and the Impressionists (Monet, Manet and Daubigny). The subjectivity earns greater expression with Van Gogh, Cezanne and the Fauvists up to overcome the dualism that spans the artist's landscape. It is in 1839 that appears officially the photography with the Daguerreotype, and it makes it possible to capture images of landscapes, thus helping to spread the scenes of landscapes, thanks to postcards, and the whole type of images produced afterwards. The image of landscape is vulgarised.
The transition from painting to photography is something dramatic. What was once considered commonplace, the use of painting as a way to reproduce the reality, and in this specific case the landscape, moves to photography. Who speaks in landscape also speaks in other themes, such as the portrait for example. The transition from painting to photography in the representation of landscape also brings changes in concept. Photography appears in a complicated moment, the world passes through major changes in the way of producing and consuming, generating a desire for new images. The landscape is one of the most photographed topics given its immobility, which for the time was an advantage. The yearning for capturing the snapshot and record the events, influence the world of art, and leads to this worry in register also the transience of modern life. The photograph generates a revolution in painting due to processes of change of look. It is from this moment that several painters start to use photography as a technical resource, producing views of nature from photos. As soon as it was possible to Daguerre fix an image, photographers have replaced the painters; however, the landscape painting was not the biggest victim of this novelty. The landscape photography merges with the very history of the medium. It is with the emergence of photography that begins the construction of a large file on the representation of landscape.
The voyages of exploration of several continents in 19th century, the exploration and shooting in exotic and unexplored sites, and the railway expansion in the United States, constitute targets for successive registers. From 1860, certain French and English institutions, the army and the navy, finance the action of photographers explorers, so as to produce documentary collections.
This growing photography use created in different types of records, mixing natural landscape and historical architecture, as are the works of Bayard, Le Secq, Baldus and Le Gray, after having participated in the heliographic mission in 1851.
Throughout the 20th century the gaze on the landscape will evolve in accordance with the concerns, culminating in 1975 with the exhibition "New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape" which synthesizes new models of photographic representations of a landscape that is not separate from the whole, the people and their activities or even the typologies of Bernd and Hilla Becher, which later influenced names such as Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer, Thomas Ruff, Thomas Struth that later also worked in different ways the landscape.
The space is a complex scientific and philosophical concept, and it is always connected to the concept of time. Any physical or psychological experience that diminishes the photographic experience will always double. An important part of the photograph is to think about the space (and time), through the medium of photography, in other words "the photographic thought ".
The landscape while playback process resulting from the seizure of the gaze, is a framework, a selection of possible hypotheses, from the individual who organizes, combines and promotes arrangements of content and form. Is always associated with the idea of clipping spacial and temporal, as also evokes the concept of collection and assembly.
The concept of landscape has been undergoing some changes and how we perceive it too. In art, the idea of landscape emerges during the Renaissance period. Over the centuries, and in the course of artistic movements, the concept of landscape and its use are evolving, and in addition to its primitive connection to painting, it extends to literature. Until the 18th century, the concept of landscape was connected directly to the painting, because until then there was no other way of reproduction. This was therefore the purest form to represent the landscape.
The 19th century, is a period marked by the transformations from Modernity. New movements arise with the school of Barbizon and the Impressionists (Monet, Manet and Daubigny). The subjectivity earns greater expression with Van Gogh, Cezanne and the Fauvists up to overcome the dualism that spans the artist's landscape. It is in 1839 that appears officially the photography with the Daguerreotype, and it makes it possible to capture images of landscapes, thus helping to spread the scenes of landscapes, thanks to postcards, and the whole type of images produced afterwards. The image of landscape is vulgarised.
The transition from painting to photography is something dramatic. What was once considered commonplace, the use of painting as a way to reproduce the reality, and in this specific case the landscape, moves to photography. Who speaks in landscape also speaks in other themes, such as the portrait for example. The transition from painting to photography in the representation of landscape also brings changes in concept. Photography appears in a complicated moment, the world passes through major changes in the way of producing and consuming, generating a desire for new images. The landscape is one of the most photographed topics given its immobility, which for the time was an advantage. The yearning for capturing the snapshot and record the events, influence the world of art, and leads to this worry in register also the transience of modern life. The photograph generates a revolution in painting due to processes of change of look. It is from this moment that several painters start to use photography as a technical resource, producing views of nature from photos. As soon as it was possible to Daguerre fix an image, photographers have replaced the painters; however, the landscape painting was not the biggest victim of this novelty. The landscape photography merges with the very history of the medium. It is with the emergence of photography that begins the construction of a large file on the representation of landscape.
The voyages of exploration of several continents in 19th century, the exploration and shooting in exotic and unexplored sites, and the railway expansion in the United States, constitute targets for successive registers. From 1860, certain French and English institutions, the army and the navy, finance the action of photographers explorers, so as to produce documentary collections.
This growing photography use created in different types of records, mixing natural landscape and historical architecture, as are the works of Bayard, Le Secq, Baldus and Le Gray, after having participated in the heliographic mission in 1851.
Throughout the 20th century the gaze on the landscape will evolve in accordance with the concerns, culminating in 1975 with the exhibition "New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape" which synthesizes new models of photographic representations of a landscape that is not separate from the whole, the people and their activities or even the typologies of Bernd and Hilla Becher, which later influenced names such as Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer, Thomas Ruff, Thomas Struth that later also worked in different ways the landscape.
The space is a complex scientific and philosophical concept, and it is always connected to the concept of time. Any physical or psychological experience that diminishes the photographic experience will always double. An important part of the photograph is to think about the space (and time), through the medium of photography, in other words "the photographic thought ".
The landscape while playback process resulting from the seizure of the gaze, is a framework, a selection of possible hypotheses, from the individual who organizes, combines and promotes arrangements of content and form. Is always associated with the idea of clipping spacial and temporal, as also evokes the concept of collection and assembly.
It is important for the landscape delimitation, to be upheld within a horizon momentary; each material element can arise as nature, but be presented as landscape.
According to the sociologist Georg Simmel, in " The Philosophy of Landscape", to acquire a conscience to "see a landscape", we needed a certain set of visual field attract our mind - the landscape as human thought - in addition to the isolated elements, allowing form a totality, a new set, a new unit.
"A piece of nature", as the author argues, it is an opposition, because according to the sociologist Georg Simmel "nature does not have pieces, it is the unity of a whole", and to highlight you a fragment, this will no longer be entirely nature. For Georg Simmel that allows a particular "piece of nature" constitute themselves as a landscape is a sense of order of subjectivity and affectivity, which the author called "Stimmung", a state of mind, tom, tint, personal feelings.
What the artist does is to subtract the information contained in the landscape, such as immediately given, a piece delimited, a piece selected, form a unity, which until then is within a set. When we are faced with a landscape, the unity of existence natural strives to integrate us in its fabric, the break between an "I" that sees and an "I" that feels shows doubly visible.
During the unfolding of the creative process I investigated the work of several artists, since the artists of Land Art, such as for example, Robert Smithson and Walter de Maria, until the Portuguese artists, Pedro Cabrita Reis through of his sculptures of light, and its plastic intervention, in Da Bemposta dam, Julião Sarmento with their images and drawings or Helena
Almeida, with its series of images where she seeks to intervene the photographic print giving use to painting materials.
This project is in some way a meeting of all these influences. For almost a year I was photographing landscapes where sees more clearly its transformation through human intervention.
In this regard, I propose a simplification of the landscape not to a level of the decisive moment but a moment later, a phase of intervention in the final print, through the medium of painting and through the material scriber oil pastel. My intervention falls always on this material, bringing the means of painting inside the photograph. This idea of combining painting and photography is not new in contemporary Portuguese photography, because both Julião Sarmento and Helena Almeida used with other purposes. "The simplification of the landscape" arises from a demand for minimize, searching for "key lines" of the landscape, by selection of the most important elements, through the outline and trace, in order to create a synthesis and simplification of the original landscape. The use of pastel, due to initial experiments on what materials to use and the aesthetic and physical outcome and warranty that effectively the material gave me. With this work I try to question the use of generic paint, giving it a new use this time, introducing a deviation in relation to the constitution of the pictorial in accordance with conventional assumptions, allowing generic exploit the potential without exhausting. This substitution of painting by photography in the past century, it is now used with the objective exactly opposite to simplify.
According to the sociologist Georg Simmel, in " The Philosophy of Landscape", to acquire a conscience to "see a landscape", we needed a certain set of visual field attract our mind - the landscape as human thought - in addition to the isolated elements, allowing form a totality, a new set, a new unit.
"A piece of nature", as the author argues, it is an opposition, because according to the sociologist Georg Simmel "nature does not have pieces, it is the unity of a whole", and to highlight you a fragment, this will no longer be entirely nature. For Georg Simmel that allows a particular "piece of nature" constitute themselves as a landscape is a sense of order of subjectivity and affectivity, which the author called "Stimmung", a state of mind, tom, tint, personal feelings.
What the artist does is to subtract the information contained in the landscape, such as immediately given, a piece delimited, a piece selected, form a unity, which until then is within a set. When we are faced with a landscape, the unity of existence natural strives to integrate us in its fabric, the break between an "I" that sees and an "I" that feels shows doubly visible.
During the unfolding of the creative process I investigated the work of several artists, since the artists of Land Art, such as for example, Robert Smithson and Walter de Maria, until the Portuguese artists, Pedro Cabrita Reis through of his sculptures of light, and its plastic intervention, in Da Bemposta dam, Julião Sarmento with their images and drawings or Helena
Almeida, with its series of images where she seeks to intervene the photographic print giving use to painting materials.
This project is in some way a meeting of all these influences. For almost a year I was photographing landscapes where sees more clearly its transformation through human intervention.
In this regard, I propose a simplification of the landscape not to a level of the decisive moment but a moment later, a phase of intervention in the final print, through the medium of painting and through the material scriber oil pastel. My intervention falls always on this material, bringing the means of painting inside the photograph. This idea of combining painting and photography is not new in contemporary Portuguese photography, because both Julião Sarmento and Helena Almeida used with other purposes. "The simplification of the landscape" arises from a demand for minimize, searching for "key lines" of the landscape, by selection of the most important elements, through the outline and trace, in order to create a synthesis and simplification of the original landscape. The use of pastel, due to initial experiments on what materials to use and the aesthetic and physical outcome and warranty that effectively the material gave me. With this work I try to question the use of generic paint, giving it a new use this time, introducing a deviation in relation to the constitution of the pictorial in accordance with conventional assumptions, allowing generic exploit the potential without exhausting. This substitution of painting by photography in the past century, it is now used with the objective exactly opposite to simplify.
