Tiago Santana (Crato CE 1966)
Photographer.
Tiago Sobreira de Santana studied mechanical engineering at the Universidade Federal do Ceará - UFC, in Fortaleza, but did not complete the course. In 1986, he took part in the workshop given by Stefania Bril at the 5th National Photography Week in Curitiba and, the following year, in the workshop led by Claudio Feijó at the 6th National Photography Week in Ouro Preto, Minas Gerais. He has worked professionally since 1989 in photojournalism and documentary photography. In Fortaleza, he coordinated the 1st and 2nd Ceará Photography Weeks, in 1989 and 1990, and in 1993 he helped create the group Dependentes da Luz. He then founded, with Celso Oliveira, the publishing house and photo archive Tempo d'Imagem. His documentary work focuses on cultural traditions and popular festivals of the Northeast, devoted above all to recording the pilgrimage of the faithful to Juazeiro do Norte, Ceará. In 1994, he was awarded the Bolsa Vitae de Artes grant to complete the photo essay Benditos, which gave rise to the book of the same name, published in 2001, and to his first solo exhibition, held at Sesc Pompeia in São Paulo. In 1995, he received the Marc Ferrez Photography Prize from the Fundação Nacional de Arte - Funarte. In the late 1990s, with Celso Oliveira, Antonio Augusto Fontes, Ed Viggiani and Elza Lima, he developed the project Brasil sem Fronteiras [Brazil without Borders], documenting the border towns of western Brazil. Santana divides his time between Fortaleza and Rio de Janeiro, where he runs a branch of the Tempo d'Imagem publishing house.
Critical Commentary
Tiago Santana's work is grounded in notions of cultural identity and social critique. The photographer devotes himself above all to black-and-white documentation of religious festivals and popular traditions of Northeastern Brazil. From 1992 to 1999, he produced the photo essay Benditos, on the pilgrimage of thousands of the faithful to the Ceará town of Juazeiro do Norte, where devotees of Padre Cícero travel every year.
In documentary photography, unlike work for newspapers or magazines, the photographer chooses the subject to record and the time available to produce the images, and seeks to bring a personal vision to the theme. This kind of photo essay reveals as much about its subject as about the way the artist perceives and organizes the elements of real life in the camera's viewfinder.
In the essay on the pilgrims, Santana emphasizes the emotional character of the processions, focusing on people's relationship with religious icons. He lends grandeur to the faithful and the saints by shooting them from below with a wide-angle lens, which enlarges the figures in the foreground as well as the sense of distance between objects. He also emphasizes the subjective dimension of his photos by fragmenting bodies and working with large empty areas, which often heighten the sense of the devotees' solitude and effort.
Testimonials
The Pilgrimages to Juazeiro do Norte
"A documentation project I have been developing since 1992 on the pilgrimages to Juazeiro do Norte, one of the main centers of popular religiosity in Brazil, the region where I was born and spent my whole childhood and adolescence, and to which I have very strong ties.
Every year, a million pilgrims cross the northeastern backlands to renew Padre Cícero's 'magic' blessing and rid themselves of the sins and miseries of the world.
It is this movement, at once religious and profane, forming a festival of intense joy and piety, that I intend to record. It is with the eye of someone who has experienced the phenomenon since childhood, the time when the strongest impressions are recorded, that I try to document it in this work. The eye of someone who does not merely see but takes part.
My idea is to avoid redundancy through an account that transcends mere recording (journalistic or anthropological) and conveys a whole load of meanings, balancing reason and emotion to capture the essence of this expression of popular religiosity.
The aim is not to account for the festival in all its complexity, but to embrace its multiculturalism and capture the many festivals with their unfoldings and details, unraveling enigmas, poeticizing reality and celebrating life.
Working in black and white means accepting the dichotomy between joy and pain, faith and disbelief, the religious and the profane. Abandoning color in favor of contrast, heightened tension, the capture of light and the gradations of gray.
Embarking on the popular imagination, avoiding stereotypes and seeking a result that is not closed in on itself, that is not explained by words, but is pregnant with emotion.
Using light and lenses not to sweeten a bitter reality but to serve as a counterpoint to reason, to a logic the people build in the festival and in their unbreakable faith".
Tiago Santana
SANTANA, Tiago. As Romarias a Juazeiro do Norte. sl. sd.
Collections
Brooklyn Museum - Nova York (Estados Unidos)
Casa de Las Américas - Havana (Cuba)
Coleção Joaquim Paiva
Coleção Lili Sverner - São Paulo SP
Coleção Pirelli/Masp de Fotografias - São Paulo SP
Fundação Cultural de Curitiba (PR)
Solo Exhibitions
2001 - São Paulo SP - Benditos, at Sesc Pompeia
2001 - Liège (Belgium) - Benditos, at L'Oeil Nu
Group Exhibitions
1989 - Fortaleza CE - 39th Salão de Abril [April Salon], at Fundação Cultural de Fortaleza
1990 - Fortaleza CE - 41st Salão de Abril [April Salon], at Centro de Artes Visuais Raimundo Cela - photography prize
1991 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - FotoRiografia, at MAM/RJ
1992 - Belém PA - 1st Pará Contemporary Art Salon, at Fundação Cultural do Pará - photography prize
1992 - Munich (Germany) - Nahe dem Wilden Herzen (500 Years of the Discovery of America), at Aspekte Galerie - best photography prize
1993 - Fortaleza CE - 43rd Salão de Abril [April Salon], at Fundação Cultural de Fortaleza
1993 - Belém PA - 2nd Pará Contemporary Art Salon, at Fundação Cultural do Pará
1993 - Fortaleza CE - Contemporary Photography from Ceará, at Galeria Ignês Fiuza
1993 - Fortaleza CE - Ceará Mail Art - Dependentes da Luz, at Galeria do Centro de Turismo
1994 - Belém PA - 3rd Pará Contemporary Art Salon, at Fundação Cultural do Pará
1994 - São Paulo SP - Contemporary Brazilian Photography, International Photo Meeting, at Sesc Pompeia
1994 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Contemporary Brazilian Documentary Photographers, at CCBB
1994 - Havana (Cuba) - Ensayo Fotográfico Prize, at Casa de Las Américas
1994 - João Pessoa PB - Who Are We, at the 1st Paraíba Photography Week
1994 - Fortaleza CE - Who Are We, at Museu do Ceará
1994 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Who Are We, at Galeria Sérgio Milliet
1994 - Niterói RJ - Who Are We, at UFF
1995 - Belém PA - Who Are We, at Galeria Romulo Maiorana
1995 - Caracas (Venezuela) - Ensayo Fotográfico Prize, at Centro de Estudos latino-americanos, Casa Rómulo Gallegos
1995 - Herten (Germany) - Licht Bilder, 3rd International Fototage Herten'95
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 - 5th Pirelli/Masp Photography Collection, at Masp
1996 - Ouro Preto MG - Who Are We?, at Festival de Inverno da UFMG
1996 - Curitiba PR - Brazil, Show Your Face, at Bienal Internacional de Fotografia
1996 - London (England) - Novas Travessias - Contemporary Photography in Brasil, at Photographers' Gallery
1996 - Cologne (Germany) - Licht Bilder, Junge Brasilianische Fotografie (Photokina), at Die Galerie Lichtblick
1996 - Mexico - Muestra de Fotografía Latinoamericana at the 5th Latin American Colloquium, at Centro de La Imagen
1997 - Recife PE - Who Are We?, at Galeria Observatório
1997 - San Juan (Puerto Rico) - Muestra de Fotografía Latinoamericana, at Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña
1997 - Belém PA - Arte Pará: Frontiers, at Museu de Arte de Belém - guest artist
1997 - Santiago (Chile) - El Brasil de los Brasileros, at Contra Luz Galeria
1997 - São Paulo SP - Os Sertões, at Itaú Cultural
1998 - São Paulo SP - Frontiers, at Itaú Cultural
1998 - São Paulo SP - Brazil, Good at Football, at MIS/SP
1998 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Brazil, Good at Football, at Museu da República
1998 - Fortaleza CE - Brazil, Good at Football, at Galeria do Ibeu
1998 - Recife PE - Brazil, Good at Football, at Galeria Observatório
1998 - Paris (France) - Brazil, Good at Football, at MIS/SP, at Museu do Louvre
1998 - Amsterdam (Netherlands) - Brazil, Good at Football
1998 - Madrid (Spain) - Brazil, Good at Football
1999 - Wolfsburg (Germany) - Brasilianische Fotografie 1946 bis 1998, at Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg
2000 - São Paulo SP - Photography in the Mirror, at Espaço MAM - Villa-Lobos
2000 - Recife PE - Border Images, at Observatório Cultural Malakoff
2000 - Curitiba PR - Brazil without Borders, at Centro Cultural Solar do Barão
2000 - São Paulo SP - Brazil in Black and White: 50 Photographs from the MAM Collection, at MAM/SP
2001 - São Paulo SP - Sea of Light, at Casa da Fotografia Fuji
2001 - Houston (United States) - Brazil without Borders, at Houston Center for Photography
2001 - Itatiba SP - Brazilian Photographers, at Centro Mandala
2001 - Oxford (United Kingdom) - Acts of Faith: Brazilian Contemporary Photography, at The Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology
2001 - Pittsburgh (United States) - Brazil without Borders, at Silver Eye Center for Photography
2002 - São Paulo SP - Photographs in the Collection of the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, at MAM/SP
2002 - São Paulo SP - Visions and Illuminations: Contemporary Brazilian Photography from the Joaquim Paiva Collection, at Pavilhão Lucas Nogueira Garcez - Oca
Source: Itaú Cultural
