Paraty in Focus 2011

Photo: Carlos Moskovics

Photo: Richard Avedon

Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977)

- ver e ler … Saw # 2 | To read and see - see and read ...

by Juan Esteves

In the second volume of the journal Saw, a quarterly publication of essays edited by IMS-IMS, the picture is present in different ways, be more objective in its expression, with a small photo essay, is the character of ownership, use of media to an artistic work and also in the literary development, a fictional essay from a single image. Break, an unprecedented picture of Richard Avedon (1923-2004), a portrait of the director and actor Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977).

The award-winning journalist and writer Bernardo Carvalho Rio opens a section called "Backlight". The idea is simple and good: from an image collection of the IMS write a guest on it. Attention! There is a review of the same, or a tour on their theoretical ranges semiotic loaded with academic performance. It released a text where the author departs from the chosen image to generate his fiction. The first image is chosen Moskovics Photographer Carlos (1916-1988) and the story's title is "A man of letters."

Moskovics was born in Budapest, Hungary and came to Brazil as a child in 1927. At 15 he began working as an assistant photographer in Rio de Janeiro. In the 40s he worked for magazines such as Shadow and River Magazine. In beautiful images, recorded Moskovics icons of life in Rio de Janeiro as the Urca Casino and Hotel Quitandinha in Petrópolis. The IMS has incorporated its collection of over 150,000 images, and last year published a beautiful book entitled "Dear Artist," a collection of 50 portraits of modern Brazilian art, with essay writer Sergio Micelli.

Richard Avedon made numerous portraits of filmmaker Chaplin at different stages of his life. In this edition, a novel done in Los Angeles in 1972. The image was produced in a series that Avedon made about the film world for Vogue magazine. On 11 and March 12 he photographed Jean Renoir, Fritz Lang and John Ford. Between 9 and April 12, Charlie Chaplin and Groucho Marx, Oscar Levant and Lewis Milestone. The picture published in Serrote hitherto unpublished. In the magazine, also a beautiful portrait of Groucho, which serves as a lever to the text copy of Antonio Candido "The grouchismo" written in 1941 when the author was only 23.

In the "Visual Test" magazine reproduces a series of controversial German painter Gerhard Richter, based on the death of Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin and Jan-Carl Raspe, the German terrorist group Baader-Meinhof (RAF on the fraction of the Red Army) . The work bears the title "October 18, 1977." Day three were found dead in their cells of maximum security prison Stammehein. Officially they committed suicide, but the idea was not purchased by the press.

The series of paintings (hyper-realistic as a photograph) is based on the photos published in newspapers of the time, and was exhibited in 1989 at the Haus Esters, designed by Mies van der Rohe and converted to the Municipal Museum of Krefeld. For those who want to expand the idea is worth a visit to the beautiful book by Rosangela Renno (The universal file and other files). The link is inevitable and tremendously constructive.

The "Peripheral Vision one" features a delicate test of the photographer Jonathan Torgovnik. Portraits of mothers with their children. Detail: they are victims of rape and their children accordingly. It is estimated that about 20,000 children were born in Rwanda after the genocide of 1994. Parents were men of ethnic "Hutu" that raped women "Tutsi", while killing the golde machete, their husbands.

Torgovnik images are printed on glossy paper, different from the role that brings texts, giving better quality images. These are neatly printed, as is seldom seen in editions of books of photography. Also, taking advantage of the lull, who want to see this more complete work titled "Intended Consequences" can access the site "MediaStorm" which brings a multimedia version, with testimonials of women. It's creepy!

© Gerhard Richter

© Gerhard Richter

Photo: Jonathan Torgovnik

Photo: Jonathan Torgovnik