Tiago Santana (Crato CE 1966)
Photographer.
Tiago Sobreira de Santana studied Mechanical Engineering at the Federal University of Ceará - UFCE, in Fortaleza, but does not complete the course. In 1986, he participated in the workshop given by Stefania Bril at the 5th National Photography Week in Curitiba and, the following year, in the workshop offered by Claudio Feijó at the 6th National Photography Week, in Ouro Preto, Minas Gerais. He has worked as a professional since 1989 in the areas of photojournalism and documentation. in Fortaleza, coordinates the 1st and 2nd Photography Week of Ceará, in 1989 and 1990, and, in 1993, participates in the creation of the group Dependents da Luz. d'image. His documentary work focuses on cultural traditions and popular festivals in the Northeast, dedicated mainly to the record of the pilgrimage of faithful to Juazeiro do Norte, Ceará. In 1994, he was awarded the Vitae Arts Scholarship, for the conclusion of the Benditos essay, which gives rise to the homonymous book, released in 2001, and his first individual exhibition, held at Sesc Pompéia, in São Paulo. In 1995, he received the Marc Ferrez Photography Award from the National Art Foundation - Funarte. At the end of the 1990s, with Celso Oliveira, Antonio Augusto Fontes, Ed Viggiani and Elza Lima, he developed the Brasil sem Fronteiras project, documentation of border cities in the west of the country. Santana lives between Fortaleza and Rio de Janeiro, where she maintains a branch of Editora Tempo D'Imagem.
Critical Comment
Tiago Santana's work is guided by notions of cultural identity and social denunciation. The photographer is mainly dedicated to the black-and-white registration of religious festivals and popular traditions in the Northeast of Brazil. From 1992 to 1999, he carried out the blessed essay on the pilgrimage of thousands of faithful to the Ceará city of Juazeiro do Norte, where the pilgrims of Father Cícero travel every year.
In photodocumentaryism, unlike work for newspapers or magazines, the photographer chooses the subject he wants to record and the time available for the production of images and seeks to give a personal view of the theme. This type of essay informs both about the referent and about the way the artist perceives and organizes the elements of real life on the camera display.
In the essay on pilgrims, Santana emphasizes the emotional character of the processions, focusing on people's relationship with icons. religious. It gives grandeur to the faithful and the saints by focusing them from the bottom up with the wide-angle lens, which enlarges the figures that are in the foreground as well as the feeling of distance between the objects. It also emphasizes the subjective dimension of your photos fragmenting bodies and working with large empty areas, which often enhance the notion of loneliness and effort of devotees.
Testimonies
the pilgrimages Juazeiro do Norte
"Documentary project that I have been developing since 1992 on pilgrimages to Juazeiro do Norte, one of the main centers of popular religiosity in Brazil, a region where I was born and lived all my childhood and adolescence and with which I have very strong connections.
Every year, a million pilgrims cross the northeastern hinterland to renew Father Cícero's 'magic' blessing and get rid of the sins and miseries of the world.
It is this movement, at the same time religious and profane, which constitutes a feast of intense joy and piety, which I intend to record. It is with this look of those who have experienced the phenomenon since childhood, a time to record the strongest impressions, which I try to document in this work. who participates.
My idea is to avoid redundancy through a report that transcends the mere record (journalistic or anthropological) and account for a whole load of meanings, opting for the dosage of reason and emotion to capture the essence of this manifestation of religiosity popular.
The objective is not to account for the party in all its complexity, but to bet on multiculturalism and capture the various parties with its unfoldings and details, unraveling riddles, poetizing the real and celebrating life.
Working black and the White is to accept the dichotomy between joy and pain, faith and disbelief, the religious and the profane. Abandoning color as an option for contrast, sharpening of tension, capturing light and gradations of ash.
Embark on the popular imagination, fleeing from stereotypes and seeking a result that does not close itself, that does not explain in words, but that you are pregnant with emotion.
Using light and lenses not to sweeten a bitter reality but to be the counterpoint of reason, of a logic that the people elaborate in the feast and in the unbreakable faith".
Tiago Santana
Santana, Tiago. The pilgrimages to Juazeiro do Norte Sl. SD.
Facility
Brooklyn Museum - New York (States) United States)
Casa de Las Américas - Havana (Cuba)
Joaquim Paiva Collection
Lili Sverner Collection - São Paulo SP
Pirelli/Masp Photography Collection - São Paulo SP
Curitiba Cultural Foundation (PR)
Individual exhibitions
2001 - São Paulo SP - Benditos, at SESC Pompeia
2001 - Liège (Belgium) - Blessedos, at L'Oeil Nu
Collective exhibitions
1989 - Fortaleza CE - 39th Salão de Abril, at Fundação Cultural de Fortaleza
1990 - Fortaleza CE - 41st Salão de Abril, at the Raimundo Cela Cultural Center - Photography Award
1991 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Photoriography, at MAM/RJ
1992 - Belém PA - 1st Contemporary Art Salon Paraense, at the Cultural Foundation of Pará - Photography Award
1992 - Munich (Germany) - Nahe Dem Wilden Herzen (500 years of Discovery of America), at Aspekte Galerie - Best Photography Award
1993 - Fortaleza CE - 43rd Salon de Abril, at Fundação Cultural de Fortaleza
1993 - Belém PA - 2nd Salão Paraense de Arte Contemporânea, at the Cultural Foundation of Pará
1993 - Fortaleza CE - Contemporary Photography from Ceará, at the Ignes Fiuza Gallery
1993 - Fortaleza CE - Postal Art Ceará - Dependents of Luz, at the Tourism Center Gallery
1994 - Belém PA - 3rd Contemporary Art Salon Paraense, at the Cultural Foundation of Pará
1994 - São Paulo SP - Contemporary Brazilian Photography, International Photo Meeting, at Sesc Pompéia
1994 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Brazilian contemporary documentary filmmakers, at CCBB
1994 - Havana (Cuba) - Photographic Essayo Award, at Casa de las Américas
1994 - João Pessoa PB - Who are we We, in the 1st Paraíba Photography Week
1994 - Fortaleza CE - Who are we, at the Ceará Museum
1994 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Who are we, at the Sérgio Milliet Gallery
1994 - Niterói RJ - Who are we, at UFF
1995 - Belém PA - Who are we, at the Romulo Maiorana Gallery
1995 - Caracas (Venezuela) - Photographic Essayo Award, at the Centro de Estudos Latino-Americanos, Casa Rómulo Gallegos
1995 - Herten (Germany) - Licht Bilder, 3rd International Phototage Herten'95
1995 - São Paulo SP - Brazilian collective of portraits in the 80s and 90s, at the FAAP Cultural Space
1995 - São Paulo SP - Investigação Brasil, at CCSP
1995 - São Paulo SP - 5th Pirelli Collection/Masp of Photographs, at MASP
1996 - Ouro Preto MG - Who we are We?, at the UFMG Winter Festival
1996 - Curitiba PR - Brazil shows your face, at the International Photography Biennial
1996 - London (England) - New Crossings - Contemporary Photography in Brazil, Photographer's Gallery
1996 - Cologne (Germany) - Lich Bilder, Junge Brasilianische (Photokina), at Die Galerie Lichtblick
1996 - Mexico - Latin American photography muestra at the 5th Latin American Colloquium, in the center of La Imagen
1997 - Recife PE - Who are we?, at the Observatory Gallery
1997 - San Juan (Porto Rico) - Muestra Latinoamericana photography, at the Puertorriqueña Institute of Culture
1997 - Belém PA - Arte Pará: Fronteiras, at the Belém Museum of Art - Guest Artist
1997 - Santiago (Chile) - El Brasil de Los Brasileros, at Contra Luz Gallery
1997 - São Paulo SP - Os Sertões, at Itaú Cultural
1998 - São Paulo SP - Fronteiras, at Itaú Cultural
1998 - São Paulo SP - Brasil Bom de Bola, MIS/SP
1998 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Brasil Bom de Bola, at the Museum of the Republic
1998 - Fortaleza CE - Brasil Bom de Bola, at the IBEU Gallery
1998 - Recife PE - Brasil Bom de Bola, at the gallery Observatory
1998 - Paris (France) - Brasil Bom de Bola, at MIS/SP, at the Louvre Museum
1998 - Amsterdam (Holland) - Brasil Bom de Bola
1998 - Madrid (Spain) - Brasil Bom de Bola
1999 - Wolfsburg (Germany) - Brasilianische photograph 1946 bis 1998, at the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg
2000 - São Paulo SP - The photograph in the mirror, at Espaço MAM - Villa-Lobos
2000 - Recife PE - Images of Fronteira, at the Malakoff Cultural Observatory
2000 - Curitiba PR - Brasil without borders, at the Centro Cultural do Barão
2000 - São Paulo SP - Brazil in white and black: 50 photographs from the MAM collection, at MAM/SP
2001 - São Paulo SP - Mar de Luz, at Casa da Fotografia Fuji
2001 - Houston (States United States) - Brasil Sem Fronteiras, at the Houston Center for Photography
2001 - Itatiba SP - Brazilian photographers, in the Mandala Center
2001 - Oxford (UK) - Acts of Faith: Brazilian Contemporary Photography at The Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology
2001 - Pittsburg (United States) - Brazil Without Borders, at the Silver Eye Center for Photography
2002 - Sao Paulo SP Stock Photos in the Collection of the Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo, at MAM/SP
2002 - São Paulo SP - Visions and Alumbramentos: Contemporary Brazilian Photography from the Joaquim Paiva Collection, in the Lucas Nogueira Garcez Pavilion - Oca
Source: Itaú Cultural
