Celso Oliveira (Rio de Janeiro RJ 1957)
Photographer.
Celso de Oliveira Silva begins photographing in 1975 while working as a darkroom assistant at the Estúdio Fotografismo e Artes in Rio de Janeiro. He then moves to São Paulo and starts a career as a photojournalist, contributing to several newspapers and magazines such as Veja, IstoÉ, Visão, Tênis Esporte and O Globo. In 1980, he moves to Fortaleza, where he joins the team led by Chico Albuquerque (1917-2000) at the newspaper O Povo and takes part in the photographers' group Dependentes da Luz. In the Ceará capital, in 1994, together with the photographer Tiago Santana (1966), he creates the agency and publishing house Tempo D'Imagem, with the aim of developing documentary essays and photography books. His work focuses above all on recording cultural manifestations and popular festivals of the Northeast. He takes part in several exhibitions in Brazil and abroad, notably the 5th Latin American Photography Colloquium, held in Mexico City in 1996. In the late 1990s, with Santana, Antonio Augusto Fontes (1948), Ed Viggiani (1958) and Elza Lima (1952), he develops the project Brasil sem Fronteiras [Brazil without Borders], documenting the border towns of the country's west. The work gives rise to a book of the same name, published in 2001. Oliveira lives between Fortaleza and Rio de Janeiro, where he runs a branch of the publishing house Tempo D'Imagem.
Critical Commentary
Celso Oliveira devotes himself mainly to documentary photography projects. Unlike daily photojournalism, in which the professional records specific events and has no control over what will be published, the documentary photographer chooses the subject, approaches it over an extended period and edits his own images. Aiming to assert a personal point of view, for him aesthetic questions are as important as the representation of the subject. The work is seen as a combination of art and journalism, and its goal is almost always the production of books and exhibitions. Historically, Oliveira's work is aligned with the international documentary tradition represented by the founders of the Magnum Photos agency: Robert Capa (1913-1954), Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004), David Seymour (1911-1956) and George Rodger (1908-1995). For them, photography is not an impartial testimony but a form of social intervention. Through it, they could reveal little-known realities and denounce injustice.
Oliveira's main subjects are popular culture and the religious festivals of the North and Northeast of Brazil. In his work, the framing and the arrangement of elements within the picture plane move the photograph away from a merely objective dimension. Seeking to avoid an immediate message, the photographer often shows individuals who are fragmented, blurred or partly hidden by objects. As in an unfinished drawing that makes present something incomplete, the blurring and cropping lead the viewer to imagine the shapes of the things that are hidden.
Critiques
"In 1972, a feature published in the magazine Realidade on the drought in the Northeast, in Ceará, with photos by Walter Firmo, was crucial in Celso Oliveira's decision to become a photographer. 'When I saw those photos, I thought: one day I want to go to the Northeast.'
The son of a mother from the Northeast who settled in Rio de Janeiro, Celso had carried with him, since the age of 13, the desire to reconnect with his roots. Once in the Northeast, in 1982, he set himself a goal: to photograph religiosity. At first, his enchantment with the luminosity of Ceará is expressed in color photography. In 1986 he opts for black-and-white photography, to emphasize the heightened tension and contrast of the light of Ceará.
Several photojournalists influenced Celso Oliveira's work. With his friend Ed Viggiani, in 1982, in Fortaleza, he has the chance to consider the use of black-and-white photography in the material Ed produced on religiosity.
Other influences came over time. From his contact with Tiago, he grasps the importance of rigor in the finishing of the image and the presentation of the work. From studying the great masters, he singles out the visual references of Cartier-Bresson, Josef Koudelka and Sebastião Salgado, which appear like seeds awaiting a new planting."
Ângela Magalhães e Nadja Peregrino
MUSEU DO CEARÁ. Quem somos nós: fotografia - Tiago Santana e Celso Oliveira. Texto Angela Magalhães, Nadja Peregrino; tradução Thaís Costa. Fortaleza: Museu do Ceará. 20 p., il. p&b.
Collections
Coleção Joaquim Paiva
Coleção Pirelli/Masp de Fotografias - São Paulo SP
Coleção da Fundação Cultural de Curitiba - Curitiba PR
Group Exhibitions
1982 - Fortaleza CE - Photography, at Galeria Raimundo Cela
1984 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - 1st FotoNordeste, at INFoto/Funarte
1991 - Fortaleza CE - 41st Salão de Abril [April Salon], at Fundação Cultural de Fortaleza
1991 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - FotoRiografia, at MAM/RJ
1991 - São Paulo SP - Photojournalism of the 1980s, at MIS/SP
1992 - Belém PA - 1st Pará Contemporary Art Salon, at Fundação Cultural do Pará
1992 - Fortaleza CE - 42nd Salão de Abril [April Salon] - 1st prize
1992 - Munich (Germany) - Nahe dem wilden Herzen (500 Years since the Discovery of America), at Aspekte Galerie - honorable mention
1993 - Belém PA - 12th Arte Pará Salon, at Fundação Rômulo Maiorana
1993 - Belém PA - 2nd Pará Contemporary Art Salon, at Fundação Cultural do Pará Tancredo Neves
1993 - Fortaleza CE - Ceará Mail Art, Dependentes da Luz, at Galeria do Centro de Turismo
1993 - Fortaleza CE - Contemporary Photography from Ceará, at Galeria Ignês Fiúza
1993 - São Paulo SP - Contemporary Brazilian Photography, International Photo Meeting/NAFoto, at Sesc Pompéia
1994 - Belém PA - 3rd Pará Contemporary Art Salon, at Fundação Cultural do Pará - 2nd prize
1994 - Belém PA - Arte Pará, at Galeria Rômulo Maiorana
1994 - Fortaleza CE - Who We Are
1994 - João Pessoa PB - Who We Are, at the 1st Semana Paraibana de Fotografia
1994 - Niterói RJ - Who We Are
1994 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Who We Are
1995 - Belém PA - Who We Are, at Galeria Rômulo Maiorana
1995 - Belém PA - Small Formats Salon - acquisition prize
1995 - Herten (Germany) - Licht Bilder, 3 Internationale Fototage
1995 - São Paulo SP - Brazilian Group Show of Portraits from the 1980s and 1990s, at Espaço Cultural Faap
1995 - São Paulo SP - Investigation Brazil, at CCSP
1995 - São Paulo SP - The Brazilian Portrait, 2nd International Month of Photography
1996 - Belém PA - 15th Arte Pará Salon, at Museu de Arte de Belém
1996 - Mexico City (Mexico) - Muestra de Fotografía Latinoamericana, 5th Latin American Colloquium, at Centro de la Imagen
1996 - Cologne (Germany) - Licht Bilder, Junge Brasilianische Fotografie (Photokina), at Die Galerie Lichtblick
1996 - Curitiba PR - Brazil, Show Your Face, at Bienal Internacional de Fotografia
1996 - London (England) - New Crossings, at The Photographer's Gallery
1996 - Ouro Preto MG - Who We Are, at the UFMG Festival de Inverno
1996 - São Paulo SP - 6th Pirelli/Masp Photography Collection, at Masp
1996 - São Paulo SP - Sertões, at Itaú Cultural
1997 - Belém PA - Arte Pará: Frontiers, at Museu de Arte de Belém - acquisition prize
1997 - Recife PE - Who We Are, at Galeria Observatório
1998 - Amsterdam (Netherlands) - Brazil, Good at Football
1998 - Fortaleza CE - Brazil, Good at Football, at Galeria do Ibeu
1998 - Fortaleza CE - Ceará and Pernambuco: Dragons and Lions, at Centro Dragão do Mar de Arte e Cultura
1998 - Madrid (Spain) - Brazil, Good at Football
1998 - Paris (France) - Brazil, Good at Football, at Musée du Louvre
1998 - Recife PE - Brazil, Good at Football, at Galeria Observatório
1998 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Brazil, Good at Football, at Museu da República
1998 - São Paulo SP - Brazil, Good at Football, at MIS/SP
1998 - São Paulo SP - Frontiers, at Itaú Cultural
1999 - Wolfsburg (Germany) - Brasilianische Fotografie 1946 bis 1998, at Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg
2000 - Belém PA - Arte Pará 2000, at Galeria da Residência
2000 - Curitiba PR - Brazil without Borders, at Centro Cultural Solar do Barão
2000 - Recife PE - The Court Will Pass: A Look at the Carnival of Pernambuco, at Centro de Dança Jaime Arôxa
2000 - Recife PE - Border Images, at Observatório Cultural Malakoff
2001 - Belém PA - 20th Arte Pará Salon, at Galeria da Residência
2001 - Houston (United States) - Brazil without Borders, at Houston Center for Photography
2001 - Pittsburgh (United States) - Brazil without Borders, at Silver Eye Center for Photography
2001 - São Paulo SP - Sea of Light, at Casa da Fotografia Fuji
2002 - São Paulo SP - Visions and Illuminations: Contemporary Brazilian Photography from the Joaquim Paiva Collection, at Pavilhão Lucas Nogueira Garcez - OCA
Source: Itaú Cultural
