Paula Pedrosa
BRAZIL
“I am an artist who uses photography as creative support. Influenced by training in
biology and specialization in tropical ecology, I research the relationships between
man and nature investigating the boundaries between natural and artificial, and
human nature itself. I live and work in Sao Paulo.”
In 2015, Pedrosa took part in the 6th Mostra SP de Fotografia and showed her
portfolio in the OLDmagazine #53, both with the Jd. Europa series. Pedrosa
participated in the study group and photographic production Alexandre Belém,
during 2015 and 2016. In 2016, she exhibited the Diorama series at the Nacasa Art
Collective in Florianópolis. She participated in the exhibit Do horizonte vê-se o mar -
Olhavê collective, at DOC Gallery, in São Paulo, curated by Georgia Quintas and
Alexandre Belém. In 2017, also with the Diorama series, she participated in the
Portfolio Showcase at the Foto em Pauta Festival in Tiradentes, exhibited at the
Interfoto Itu Festival, in Itu, and participated in the Valongo International Image
Festival through an invitation from OLD + MadaLab. Since 2017, she participates in
the study group and photographic production with André Penteado. In 2018,
Pedrosa took part in the Salão Nacional de Artes de Itajaí, 14° SNAI, with two works
from the Jd. Europa series and had been part of the collective exhibit Family of No
Man, in Les Recontres d’Arles, in France, with two pieces of the Diorama Series.
Diorama 2015
The artificiality standard is the starting point to approach the human being
segregation from its natural environment. It is exactly the distance which evokes the
need for contact with nature in other ways, also artificial, under the justification of
education and entertainment. Thereby arises, for example, the thematic parks, which
recreate and confine nature in thermoregulated enclosures, with no success in
hiding the coldness of human nature. Over this essay, natural and artificial get
together in such a way that can no longer be distinguished, originating environment
at the same time oddly cozy and freaking unreal. The Diorama series was
accomplished at the Sao Paulo Aquarium. My search was for nature’s appropriation
and confinement by man, mixing the natural and artificial in such an intrinsic way
that the landscapes created are so disturbing because of the degree of realism.
Paleo 2018
The proposal of this project is to portray brazilian scenes and landscapes through a
paleontological filter, focusing on the traces and allegories from the past geological
times. At the same time, it is an attempt to speculate about the relativity of time and
life, contemplating our own existence which is, despite very brief in the geological
scale, of huge importance in the sense of converting natural elements in human
demesne, redesigning the contemporary landscape.
Andrés Wertheim
ARGENTINA
Born 1962 in Buenos Aires, Andrés Wertheim began studying photography with Horacio Coppola in 1984. Having lived more than twenty years in Germany, his documentary and conceptual projects have led him to travel extensively around the world. In 1988, he studied Video Production at The International Film & TV Workshops, Maine, USA.
In 2012 he attended the Aesthetics and Expression workshop of Juan Travnik. He took part in CITY 2000, a project aimed at documenting and preserving images of life in Chicago. He is a member of the German Association of Journalists, collaborates with image agencies and his photographs are published globally. In 2018 his book "Los Espíritus del Museo / The Museum’s Ghosts" has been published. His works are part of private and public collections of Argentina, Brazil, Germany, Belgium, Russia, the United States, and Canada.
The Museum’s Ghosts
The interaction between the artworks in a museum and the public has always fascinated me. It is assumed that when people go to a museum, they carefully observe the paintings and sculptures and thoroughly read the explanatory panels. But what if the characters portrayed in nearby paintings looked upon visitors while they aren’t paying attention, what unusual scenes would we find? Through double exposures made in camera, I merge in one photo frame both planes of the visible reality - the audience in a museum’s room and the portrayed characters on the same room’s walls -trying to create a dialogue between them. When the fusion works, I
feel that the “spirits” of the museum have finally allowed me to see them. Through these unexpected stories, I want to take viewers on a journey of fantasy, a dreamlike dimension where past and present intertwine and at the same time, invite them to reflect on their own relationship with museums as cultural institutions and as spaces for distraction.
In this series, I explore the different visible planes of reality through double exposures made on camera in various museums around the world. Although in each shot I document what is placed in front of our eyes as we see it, overlapping them I question the notion of truthfulness in photography, trying to transmit something that we do not see. In the same room of a museum, I merge in correlative exposures the inanimate characters of the works of art and the visitors, producing a dialogue between them in the final image. Past and present intertwine for a moment in an oneiric dimension, testing our perception. Addressing the ambiguity of photographic description, with this work I propose a reflection on our interaction
with exhibited art and with museums as depositories of our visual history.
Traer Scott
UNITED STATES
Traer Scott is an award-winning photographer and best-selling author of ten books including Shelter Dogs (2006), Nocturne: Creatures of the Night (Princeton Architectural Press, 2014), Finding Home; Shelter Dogs and Their Stories (Princeton Architectural Press, Fall 2015) and most recently, City of Dogs (Penguin/Avery 2018) and Radiant: Farm Animals Up Close and Personal (PAP 2018). Specializing in animal photography, the human/animal bond and conservation-themed fine art photography, Scott’s work has been exhibited around the world and has appeared in National Geographic, Time, La Monde, Life Magazine, Der Stern, The New York Times LensBlog and dozens of other national and international publications. Traer was the recipient of the 2010 Rhode Island State Council for the Arts Photography Fellowship Grant and the 2008 Helen Woodward Humane Award for animal welfare activism. She lives in Providence, Rhode Island with her husband, daughter and adopted dog.
Natural History
Natural History is a series of completely candid single exposure images that merge the living and the dead to create allegorical narratives of our troubled co-existence with nature. Ghost-like reflections of modern visitors viewing wildlife dioramas are juxtaposed against the antique taxidermied subjects housed behind thick glass, their faces molded into permanent expressions of fear, aggression or fleeting passivity. After decades of over-hunting, climate change, poaching, and destruction of habitat, many of these long-dead diorama specimens now represent endangered or completely extinct species.
During the summer of my ninth and tenth years, my mother, in lieu of hiring a babysitter, kept me captive in our hometown Natural History Museum all day, every day. She functioned as a vibrant and quirky volunteer curator while I spent very long, solitary weeks communing with the museum's animals, both living and dead, as well as operating the ancient manual elevator for employees and rummaging through the museum’s disheveled collection of mite riddled, century-old periodicals and books housed in a private storage. I have since harbored an immense affection for all things old and musty and mysterious, particularly preserved animals whose half dead/half alive presence is at once fascinating and unnerving.
In 2008, during a long-anticipated visit to the American Museum of Natural History in New York, I accidentally created an intriguing image while “snapshotting” their dioramas. A reflection of my husband, inadvertently rendered in the glass and framed behind a large ostrich, gave me pause. A few months later, I began to frequent diorama exhibits around the country furtively aiming at capturing these narratives. It is both exhilarating and humbling to be the catalyst for these truly alchemical images which are set against a century-old stage and born of random timing and fractured light.
