MASP Pirelli Collection

Since 1991 a group of curators and photography scholars have being working together with MASP ( São Paulo Art Museum) and Pirelli to great what is today the biggest reference on Brazilian photography. Every year, Piero Sierra, Luiz S. Hossaka, Mario Cohen, Thomaz Farkas, Rubens Fernandes Junior and Boris Kossoy select a group of photographers that represent the production in the country that year. They also select work from the past that was not wet recognized, that way creating an historic reference on Brazilian photography. The work selected is published in a catalog and turns in to an exhibit. But the great news is that finally the collection, its artists and works, is online in a very nice website...check it out and learn some more about Brazilian photography:

Coleção MASP Pirelli de fotografia

Windson Negão

When i asked Windson or Negão, as his freinds call him,to take his picture he had just come out of the water.Windson was diving,looking for dinner. He told me that he can stay up to 2, 3 minutes under water just with his lungs. Windson is not from Barra Grande, his grandmother leaves there...he comes every school vacation or holidays.
I'm sure his grandmother prepared a great Muqueca with the beautiful Morey he had killed.

One image no words....

Bimba and Diamante.

One of the main reasons i love photography so much is because it gives me the possibility to meet new and interesting people, explore and keep my curiosity always a life. In Barra Grande i found these great guy and his "pet". Bimba found Diamante, an Brazilian condor, very young...he had fallen from his nest. So Bimba took him home and took care of the bird as if it was his child..he feeds him fresh meat and gives him showers. When Bimba rides his motorcycle Diamante follows flying..the same happens when the fisherman goes for a run in the beach. You may imagine that Bimba and Diamante are already celebrities in Barra Grande...everyone knows there story back there...and like he told me i wasn't the first to take there picture.

The Whale Hunt Project

I was reading the newspaper these morning and found these very interesting web project.We all know that internet and New Media are changing a lot the way we tell and read storys...the web designer and artist Jonathan Harris is one of the driving forces pushing these foward. After studyng at FABRICA Jonathan started working in personal web based projects always trying to create new ways of using the web to tell storys. He just created the The Whale Hunt Project. Jonathan and photographer Andrew Moore traveled to Barrow, Alaska to register the traditional whale hunting. Andrew had loads of work to do...the idea was to take a picture every 5 minutes during the hole trip...even when they where sleeping an automatic camera would flash every 5 minutes...after that everything was put together in a timeline and in a image mosaic. Check it out!!

I will soon put up some more work and info from my trip to Bahia...

Bahia..terra da felicidade..

Afternoon under a Castanhera at Ponta do Mutá beach.
My beatfull sister after an afternoon at Lagoa Azul.
Sunset at a coconut farm by Bomabasa Beach

Long time i dont show up..im sorry..It was for a very good reason!! Went up to Bahia for family holidays and after to spend New Years by the beach and do some work for Cool Cat Travel. We stayed in Barra Grande a small village located in the Maráu Penninsula. Its an amazing area where you can find both fresh and salt water and a strip of clear white sand an coconut trees. I wont say a lot by now im just posting to say im back...i have loads of material to edit and a blog to run for cool cat...so i will soon but up some more photos and try to tell you a bit about the region and its culture...and as soon as the cool cat travel blog is up i will let you know to.

Hope you had amazing holidays like i did...and i wish you all a very good 2008!!

Just need some time....

®Felipe Russo

Border Film Project

Today i received by email an advertising for a new photography magazine in the Netherlands...the YVI Magazine distributed by the same house as the well none FOAM Magazine and GUP. But these post is not about the magazine it self...in the body of the email i found the Border Film Project. Was a great surprise to see the website...the project gives disposable cameras to Mexican Migrants attempting to cross the border with the USA. When they receive the cameras they also receive a envelope (already with the stamp and address) to send the cameras back to the project if they make it across. But what is unique about the Border Film Project is that the cameras are not only given to the migrants...they are also distributed to the Minutemen...American volunteers that stay along the borders with Mexico to try to stop the migrants in there way...so the project shows both sides in an open impartial point of view..the people them self's are responsible for the images others will see about there story's. The project also made some videos... take a look at: Grand Central Station, Woman Carrying Babies, Night in the Desert and Y'all come.

Hope you enjoy..for sure helps us breaking some of the stereotypes we have about the subject.

A special book.

® Abbas Kiarostami / COSACNAIFY

As i told you in my last post i've being looking my books i had left at home....its funny to see how some have changed to my eyes. Some times you need time and new experiences to appreciate films, books etc... In Paris i had the chance to see a beautiful exhibit at the Centre Pompidou...Víctor Erice/Abbas Kiarostami Correspondances showing a dialogue between there works.I'm a bigger fan of Kiarostami's work, especially his contemplative landscape photography. Seeing his large prints and installations gave me a new glance to his work so when i got home the first book i opened was Abbas Kiarostami published by Cosac Naify after his participation at Mostra Internacional de Cinema de São Paulo. The book is very well printed..when you open it fells good in the hands. At the first pages you find his photos from the series (also exhibited at the Pompideu) Roads of Kiarostami...and while you flip the pages you will find a number of great texts discussing photography, reality, cinema and his personal approach to both midias. In the end of the book Abbas writes a beautiful peace on a homeless girl he observes at Avenida Paulista, São Paulo while she pics Aluminium cans in the garbage.

Here is a short paragraph where Abbas talks about his approach to photography....its in Portuguese, sorry. Maybe use google.

"A fotografia satisfaz os sentimentos criadores e torna possível o acesso a serenidade. Há nesse domínio uma pureza estranha..[...] A pureza da fotografia se manifesta quando se está sozinho, face a si mesmo...o silencio não é pertubado pelo clique do disparador, captando o instante. Toda a imensidão do ser está contida aí, reduzida no aparelho, de tal modo que se pode guardá-la no coração e preservá-la serenamente..[...]De uma certa maneira, divina, a fotografia permite que nos apropriemos da natureza e do ser. Não se deve, porém, esquecer que é difícil aceder a esse estado privilegiado. É preciso saber olhar, saber ver. Tudo se resume na maneira de ver. O segredo reside no conhecimento desse modo de visão, de olhar"
Abbas Kiarostami

home sweet home...

View from my window at the ground glass of my old Flexaret Automat

I'm home...after one year and tree month its a great sensation to be back. These last two days i've being just close to my family and friends (people i missed a lot)..looking my old books, listening to my old cds..and looking my archive that i had left back home....feels good!! The air, the water, the smells, the people...everything is familiar. The food...the fruits...and its warm!!! 29 degrees today...

I don't thing it will be long for me to start shooting again..São Paulo is already turning my eyes nuts!! So soon i will post new work..and also there's lots going on..i will visit some exhibits these week and will let you know. Just let me get home.....