Here's my review of "Brasiliens Moderne", an exhibition at the Museum für Fotografie in Berlin. Hope you like.
Introduction
The
exhibition “Brasiliens Moderne” at the Museum für Fotografie in Berlin combines
in the eye of four photographers – Marcel Gautherot, Thomaz Farkas, José
Medeiros and Hans Gunther Flieg – different perceptions about modernity in
Brazil. Modernity as opposed to nature,
or modernity as machines and objects, or modernity as the expressions of modern
life, - these are some of the aspects that are explored in these photographs. Some
of them assert Brazil’s entrance into modernity with the partial
industrialization the country encountered in the Southeast (especially in São
Paulo) portraying, almost quite literally, the gears that bring about
modernization (Fig. 1); or the construction
of the city of Brasília (Fig. 2),
where the key of the modern is everywhere to be appreciated in its vast,
precise, geometric and solid architecture.
Some other photographs focus on the changes that are going in Brazil at
the time; also, the customs and peoples that perhaps could be forgotten with
the coming of modernity, although never truly are, or were, completely lost,
(traditional festivities and/or fishing, indigenous peoples and their
practices, capoeira, etc.) (Fig. 3);
and the new traditions that come to be appreciated by a modern sensibility
(beaches, football (soccer) matches, national state celebrations, media
celebrities), the life of the streets, electric cables, and automobiles (Fig. 4). Some other photographs, if viewed against one
another, highlight the differences and contrasts between a modern Brazil and
nature, but also, they help recuperate a sense of “naturalness” in the modern,
in its contours, its shadows, etc. Yet,
some of the most suggestive photographs of the exhibition focus on
subjects. Subjects that in their
presence, or that in absentia, suggest potential lines of expression for
capturing, thinking and critiquing the modern.1
Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 3
Figure 4
When I think of modernity in Brazil,
I am always reminded of the poem “Pobre Alimária” (“Poor Beast”) by the
Brazilian Modernist poet Oswald de Andrade.
The poem recounts the story of a horse and buggy that gets stuck in a
track. The driver, eager to get the fancy
lawyers he was driving to their offices, quickly releases the buggy, scaring
the animal, which ends up fleeing in desperation. The driver gets hold of the horse and
castigates it with a whip. The poem is
an example of the discontinuous passage to modernity in Brazil, the clash
between the modern and the pre-modern coexisting in one space. The impasse created in Brazil, not
unlike other places in Latin America, did not have a homogeneous process of
modernization – and the poem exemplifies the immense gap between the classes that were favored
by this passage and the others that were not, and this creates ambiguous ways of looking
at this very process of modernization. The one thing that
I find applicable to this exhibition from this poem, and my reading of it, is
that modernity, though it seems to imply a teleological imperative, it never
really fulfills it. There are different
ways in which one can imply modernity, or speak about it. This exhibition does, indeed, portray different ways of thinking about modernity.
Modernity vs. Nature
The
photos of Marcel Gautherot in this exhibition seem to be arranged in three
particular moments. The first one
depicts a more natural, or pre-modern, Brazil.
Photographs of indigenous communities in the northeast, pictures of the
frondose floresta (forest greens) of
Ceará or the swampy trees of the amazon forest are part of this moment (Fig. 5). Also, Gautherot focuses his lens on fishermen
and camponeses (peasants) of the
north and northeast of Brazil, or religious or other traditional practices in
other parts of the country (Rio De Janeiro, Mina Gerais) (Fig. 6). A second moment
shows the building-construction taking place in the city of Brasília, workers
putting together the pieces of modernity, dust, cranes, steel and cement (Fig. 7). The third moment shows Brasília already
constructed, the Edifício Copan or
some other modern structure in São Paulo (Fig.
8).
Figure 5
Figure 6
Figure 7
Figure 8
There
are two interesting aspects that help think all of these photos as a whole: A)
The first and second moment in Gautherot rely not only in the landscape, but
also rely heavily in the human aspect of the story. Humans take an important role in the life
before the modern, and in the making of the modern. Yet, in the last moment, when Brasília has
come to completion (or when modernity has come to completion) the human element
seems to be secondary, or almost non-existent.
The prominence of the human element is reduced dramatically in the scale
of the buildings of Brasília. The photos
of the finished buildings do have some human figures, but they are miniscule
compared to the grandiosity of the buildings, and also, the human figures are
quit spare. These photos have a feeling
of solitude, or almost desolation (Fig.
9). This appreciation of Brasília,
not unlike the one for the U.S. American suburb, seems to express a bleak picture
of a type of mid-20th century alienating modernity. Gautherot captures this profoundly well. B) Yet, Gautherot also connects some of the
photographs of the natural world, with those of the current capital of
Brazil. He treats the objects by highlighting
their form, geometry and texture; and his almost chiaroscuro treatment of light
creates an interplay between light and shadow that is very unique. This parallel between these two moments
reinsert nature into the seeming bleakness of modernity. Gautherot could be telling the viewer that
the natural world and the modern world have more in common that apparent to the
eye (Fig. 10 and 11).
Figure 9
Figure 10
Figure 11
Thomaz
Farkas has a very different view of Brasília than that of Marcel Gautherot
though both of them have photographs of the capital from similar angles and
viewpoints. Yet Farkas fills the
monuments and buildings of the city with human subjects. What in Gautherot is solitude, bleakness and
desolation, in Farkas is beaming with people and humanity (Fig. 12). He takes pictures
of people walking, running, sitting at the Pacaembú Stadium in Brazil (the
stadium of S.C. Corinthians Paulista, “O timão” (the great team), “O time do povo” (The team of the people)), people standing on
a metal fence in Brazil, kids playing with a fake ball outside of the
stadium. Modernity for Farkas is filled
with people, living the modern life (Fig.
13). Yet, he is also interested in
forms and shapes. The repeating
horizontal lines in a building, the half circles of a clay roof, and the
plethora of rhyzomatic cables in a street: modernity as an endless reproduction
of the same shapes and forms. Farkas
perhaps criticizes modernity here with this disorganized, and perhaps even dangerous,
array of cables in this street (Fig. 14). Also, he chooses to take pictures of
Sacolândia (Gauntherot also took pictures of Sacolândia, although they are not
present in this exhibition), the outskirts of Brasília. These photos portray another side of the
story of the beautiful, immaculate and brand new city. Sacolândia is a favela where some of the
workers that made the “miracle” of Brasília possible lived. It was important for Farkas to show this
other failed side of modernity (Fig. 15).
Figure 12
Figure 13
Figure 14
Figure 15
The
endless reproduction of shapes, forms, tools and machines is an important
technical aspect of the modern world.
And the part of the exhibition that showcases Hans Gunther Flieg focuses
on this. The world of industrial
factories and machines make up most of Flieg’s photographs. Flieg’s work reinforces the importance of
machines, and of the people who build them and operate them, into the making of
modernity, and of a modern Brazil (Fig.
16). One has to remember that Brazil
is one of the most, if not the most, important economy in Latin America. Its industrial might demonstrated by the
cultural and material “little” empire that holds over South America (South
American nations consume Brazilian products, buy Tucanos - Brazilian military airplanes – and
Brazilian-manufactured (though not yet Brazilian-branded) cars. Of note is the photo of the electronic store
in São Paulo, with its zig-zag walkway and the workers standing at
perfectly-spaced intervals in the walkway (Fig.
17). Though this photo, and others
perhaps, was taken for company pamphlets and newsletters, it reinforces the
idea of modernity as perfectly timed and spaced clockwork machine-like
functionality. Modernity is or must be
perfection, or as closed to it as possible.
Modernity is machines, and the machine-world, but it also represents a
type of lifestyle that comes with it.
Figure 16
Figure 17
Modernity as Modern life
Though
José Medeiros, like Marcel Gautherot, painted pictures of indigenous
communities in the north of Brazil, and of Candômble and other rituals in different
parts of the country, I find his pictures of modern life in Rio de Janeiro much
more suggestive. Photos of couples
dancing, intellectuals sitting around in bars, a little boy attentively
watching a football (Soccer) match, a man reading a book by himself at a café,
etc. (Fig. 18). In particular, two photos in this exhibition
caught my attention incredibly. The
first one is a sine qua non for any José Medeiros exhibition (if I may indulge
in hyperbole), and one that represents a type of modernity in “Brazilian
key”. The photo is that of the two cars
next to one another, with the twin peaks of Rio de Janeiro in the background
and a human figure approaching the cars from the beach (Fig. 19). This picture makes
me think that Brazil is thinking modernity in its own particular way; beaches
and cars, the green landscape and the concrete must coexist for a Brazilian
modernity. But also, it makes me think
of the power that the Southeast of the country (Especially São Paulo and Rio de
Janeiro) have to represent Brazilian reality.
Rio and Sampa are the industrial and cultural capitals of the country,
and they are not interested in letting their thrones go.
Figure 18
Figure 19
The second photo that drew my
attention is the one of the male bather facing away from the camera. The camera captures the back and behind of a
muscular man from below. The man is wearing
only a sunga (Brazilian swimming trunks) with drops of water glistening with
the sun in his back (Fig. 20). This homoerotic, and sensuous photograph and
the position of the subject bring to mind modernist paintings that José
Medeiros must have been familiar with.
Among them, the black stoic face of “Bananal” by Lasar Segall, or the “Lavrador
de Café” by Cândido Portinari. But most
importantly, it reminds me of the famous modernist painting “O mestiço” also by
Portinari (It also recalls Medeiros’s own camponês
– Fig. 6).
Figure 20
Figure 21 (Pic from http://taislc.blogspot.de/2009/01/cndido-portinari.html)
“O
mestiço” is a painting of a plantation worker (Fig. 21). The worker is
facing the viewer with his arms crossed.
His body is muscular, and his factions are either indigenous or
Afro-Brazilian, though the name of the painting forces the viewer to think of
this subject as mestiço. And this is one common way that Brazil
constructed its own identity, and how it wanted to construct the subject of
this new modernity: a subject that is a mix of races, and represents the best
of all. José Medeiros’s subject
references Portinari’s paintings in the tenacity of the male figure and in its
ambiguous phenotype, though in the case of the photo, the man faces away from
the camera. This is a different subject,
and it is indifferent to representation.
If the modernist painters wanted to construct identity thinking of the
tenacity of plantation workers, José Medeiros’s photo does it with this equally
tenacious male figure that is no longer a plantation worker, or a peasant, but
a city dweller, with leisure time to spend at the beach. He, like Brazil, does not care to be
represented, and does not need to face the camera. This a bold gesture. A portrait where the portrayed decides that he does not want to be part of the illusion
of representation – perhaps he would rather represent himself. He, metaphorically perhaps, faces the
horizon, the future. And Brazil is, of
course, o país do futuro (the country
of the future), or imagines itself to be.
Like the bird or plane that is (the plan of) Brasília flying to meet the
future, this subject also gazes in that direction – and the future is, of
course, the promise of modernity.
The Space of the Exhibit
The
exhibition in its physical arrangement of the photographs represents the
clockwork, precision of modernity. Right
angles in the walls breaking up the spaces of the photographs, and all of the
frames where the photographs are placed are almost identical in size, they are
almost all at the same height from the floor, and almost identically spaced
from one another. The walls are
immaculately white, and it does give you the feeling of standing in, or perhaps
outside of, one of those buildings in Brasília right after it was built.
If
you let your eye wander as you watch any particular photograph in the
exhibition, and you catch the reflection of the glass that covers the photo,
you will see the seemingly endless array of photos perfectly arranged in the
walls behind you or to your right and/or left.
It inspires an almost mise-en-abyme feeling. It is as if, by standing in front of only one
photo, you can have all of the others reproduced in the reflection of the one
that you are looking at (you can catch this reflection of the other walls, and
the photos in the walls, standing in front of almost any of the photos at the
exhibition). Yes, modernity is the age
of the mechanical reproduction, and a photography exhibit perhaps more than
anything else always alludes to this.
However, the aura here is not lost, quite the opposite, it is gained in
this mise-en-abyme feeling. These
photographs are the trace of a moment that is long gone. Modernity in Brazil cannot be the same after
1964, and the dense, cloudy and authoritarian years (with “economic miracle”
and everything included) that came after.
The exhibit makes us look back to the Brazil, and the plethora of Brazils
as represented by these different views of modernity, that wanted to be the
country of the future, from a future that is not exactly what it then
imagined.
The
dates of the exhibition encompassed a time that denoted an interesting
political time for Brazil, and many historians looking at the Brazil from this period remain ambiguous about its characterization, or at least, in the celebration of Brazilian progress during this era. Caudillo-style politician and strong authoritarian leader Getúlio Vargas marked this era until
1954 (though with a break in between from 1945-1951), and he is an ambiguous entity for many Brazilianists. The exhibition seems to
put us in this time, sans the political, quite well, but does not do a good job
of capturing modernity through a retroactive lens. The promise of modernity was devastated by
the authoritarian regime that kept Brazil under its reign for more than 20
years starting in 1964, and this exhibition does not seem to be very reflective
of this (Though one can argue that Thomaz Farkas’s photographs of Sacolândia,
and the misery of the working class there, are one way that it does engage in
reflection). Though the exhibit shows
different sides of modernity, it has a hard time engaging in the darker side of
it, barely touching it. The exhibition
does show the camponeses of the
Northeast of the country – though in almost nostalgic light – and the awe of
indigenous peoples touching an airplane (for example), but where are the underpaid workers of
São Paulo? The malandros of Rio de
Janeiro that the samba musician Noel Rosa is already talking about in the 1930s? I should admit, that not being in expert in
Brazilian photography, I am not sure that representations of these darker
aspects of modernity do exist, but surely I can think of interesting ways that
the exhibition could engage with these issues and questions. In the political atmosphere of 2013, when the
Brazilian government is once again repressing the voice of the public – the black blocs and other protesters that
have taken the streets in the last year – this seems a fairly tame view at a
modernity that has promised much for Brazil and the Brazilian people, but that
has in many occasions come up short.
Though Brazil is the country invited to all of the cultural events of
Germany for this year – the Frankfurt Book Fair and other festivals showcasing
Brazilian culture, etc., there seems to be a barely-critical look at Brazil
(Perhaps, in hope of political correctness or…whatever), I would say that today
Brazil is not yet the country of the present, and still the country of the
future.
Notes
1. All the pics in this blog post belong to the Instituto Moreira Salles, unless otherwise noted.
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