Galeria de Arte AFK

 Artist statement

 

 

"Regarding the photographic portrait as an act, we should consider it as an inter-action, as something physical and corporeal, taking place within a certain material space which is invaded or constituted by the photographer, by his body, by his gaze, by the presence of the camera. And this is the space where to the subject also enters. If we think about this space inhabited by the subject and photographer, where they engage, the photographic portrait (as an act) becomes necessarily centred on their physical and visual movement, on their bodies who construct themselves before each other, who are also subject to that space, within the being and doing of the portrait.

 

So we have here an idea of the photographic portrait as a performance. Photographer and subject construct themselves physically (and mutually) both as subjects in the field of vision, as a connection and projective movement of representation of their bodies in the visible world. The photographic portrait exists in this encounter, in this confrontation and cooperation, and the space of the image is the stage for this convergence.

 

We can take this idea towards the definition of a pose, not as something static, but instead as a motion, as the taking of the image by the subject in his or her body, and as an oscillation between tension and equilibrium. The subject, in his or her pose, physically assumes and projects his or her relationship with the world and the other, before the body of the photographer, in the presence of the camera.

Thus we near our understanding of the image to that of a performative utterance, and to a displacement.” Manuel Sousa