Yesterday Ricardo brought his Large Format camera to the lab. We took a 24x18 RC paper and placed it in the negative holder. Four minutes of exposure at f4.5 gave a dark negative print. This is the positive image from the digitalized negative. After this session we were happy like small kids. Can you blame us?
14 October 2010
07 October 2010
30 September 2010
27 September 2010
19 September 2010
30 August 2010
25 August 2010
FOCUS: “Chica Barbie” by Carl Bower
“Set against a backdrop of poverty, crime, and the hemisphere’s longest running civil war, nowhere are the contests more ubiquitous and revered than in Colombia. In these carefully scripted shows of fantasy, beauty as a concept, commodity and singular goal is stripped to its raw elements. There is no ambiguity or pretense that anything else matters.
The queens are celebrities. Many of the roughly 400 contests a year can shut down a small town for days as thousands jam plazas and parade routes for a glimpse of them. Icons of a rigidly defined ideal, the contestants highlight the conflated relationship between beauty and attraction. Many of them seem familiar, stirring recollections of the same perfect features seen elsewhere, along with the identical flirtatious laughter, mock surprise and relentless optimism. In their quest for adoration, they erase all traces of individuality.”
Carl Bower’s website.
06 August 2010
05 August 2010
03 August 2010
Untitled
Douro’s region (Portugal), Nuno Vieira Matos, 2007 (gelatine silver print) – click to enlarge
27 July 2010
‘SCAPE: Mitch Epstein
Omaha, Nebraska, from the series “What is American Power?”, Mitch Epstein 2008
25 July 2010
Return
It is been a while since I do not post here. Time constraints along with the fact that I am in serious need for some vacations are the main reasons. However, another reason was preventing me to post more often. I was able to get a space to assemble my own printing lab. It is a small space but has an interior room, a living-room/kitchen and a bathroom with a shower cabinet, and best of all: is near my house. It’s perfect. I’ve painted the interior room mostly in white (matt); the part where the enlargers will be placed (about 1/3) was painted black.
The installation is still temporary; in the second semester I am planning to have something more permanent, including two workstations.
Some pictures to show you (taken with my mobile so ignore the low quality):
The enlarger (Opemus) with two safety lights (for now placed on the table), all the necessary accessories and a fan (Portugal weather); you can see the black background.
Here you can see the white and black paintings; I have decided to not paint all the room in black because that would decrease the lighting capacity of the safety lights.
Because I want to have low start-up and wrap-up times, the trays are covered with wood panels to prevent evaporation and oxidation; this way I just need to remove and place the panels which takes less time than transferring the chemical between the trays and the recipients. Let’s see if this works. This is the part where I realize that I am not young anymore; I definitively need to have a table there.
This is the shower cabinet. I bought a smaller shower cabinet floor to use as a washing tank; it is built with a polymer which makes it lighter and cheaper; my next challenge, to place it higher.
Finally, my first print being washed; 24x18 FB paper of a street scene needing some serious mask for the sky.
I’ll post more pictures when a more definitive installation is set up.
I want to thank Ricardo Canelas and Cristina for all the support.
14 June 2010
Untitled
Douro’s region (Portugal), Nuno Vieira Matos, 2007 (gelatine silver print) – click to enlarge
12 June 2010
30 May 2010
23 May 2010
09 May 2010
Untitled
Armação de Pêra (Portugal), Nuno Vieira Matos, 2007 (gelatine silver print) – click to enlarge
02 May 2010
19 April 2010
18 April 2010
15 April 2010
Exhibition
All set for the opening of “Richard III” exhibition, Saturday, April 17th, 6pm. Please show!
More informations can be found here.
FOCUS: “Superficielle” by Ricardo Canelas
What happens when an entire city collapses beneath water and the most absolute despair? More significantly, what happens to that same city after such catastrophe? Ricardo Canelas takes us there in the eyes of a spectator that most of the times seems invisible and inconsequent to the routine life of the inhabitants. Resigned, people seem to live holding times, probably still surprised for what happened, perhaps profoundly tired. Canelas carefully composed a vanitas in a form of a photographic set for our own abandonment.
NVM
Ricardo Canelas’ website.
12 April 2010
11 April 2010
Exhibition
This body of work results from an interpretation, using Photography, of the creative process involved in staging Shakespeare’s play “Richard III” by Grupo de Teatro de Letras, directed by Avila Costa. Like Power itself, Richard also attracts the audience to the machiavellian swirl of conspiracy through his monologues. In those moments Richard shares the stage with his thoughts and the latter with our curiosity for a certain evilness for conquest. Richard mirrors us. Once set, we start finding Richard in all the other characters and a sense of claustrophobia emerges from this play.
Building such plot is made with masks after deconstructing the perception of an individual of that staging. Words group together into sentences, that break into lines which will need the actor to be in the zone. The actor is an interpreter and carries the immense responsibility of showing it to us, without the safety net of writing, canvas or photographic paper, developed and fixed. Through photography and exposing the result in an almost chronological fashion, a history is built remaining necessarily incomplete. Stage tension is transmuted in the suspension of the bodies in the paper and the masks are crystallized in the only context delivered by the photographic subject. In the end, the work exhibited tries to be as timeless as the play itself, not because there is an implication but because of the play subject on its own.
Nuno Vieira Matos
nunovieiramatos@gmail.com
http://nunovieiramatos.blogspot.com
http://www.nucleoartefotografica.com
Thanks to: Avila Costa for the opportunity and availability, to the actors in GTL for the cooperation (Andre Canario, Andre Pardal, Bruno Matay, Carolina Rocha, Catarina Salgueiro, Claudia Pinto, Isabel Martins, Ivo Santos, Joana Araujo, Joana Lima, Joana Campelo, Jorge Albuquerque, Jorge Completo, Mariana Vieira, Marisa Russo, Miriam Vieira, Monica Carrusca, Raquel Cipriano), Joao Figueiredo Dias for the support and logistics, Flavio Nunes for the videos, Nucleo Arte Fotografica for the opportunities it allow, Mafra Municipality for the space, Pedro Ramos for the availability and strong commitment, and Cristina for being there always.
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