NO PORTRAIT
A portrait is always a record of ourselves—a legacy we leave behind to make visible that we existed at some point in history. This series stems from the idea of how we hide within ourselves day after day, sometimes through introspective attitudes or even behind the very face of happiness, yet often completely concealing how we truly feel. Throughout this process, we reinforce behaviors that we do not always externalize, and over time we also create bonds with others.
Fading, going unnoticed, not standing out—these become strategies we all use at times: the desire not to be identifiable to others for many reasons—harassment, social pressure, and more. For these reasons, becoming almost invisible becomes important, even a survival strategy.
NATURA
The beauty of what no longer lives. Since childhood, during visits to natural history museums, I was always struck by the large number of animals and plants around me—always static, eternally still, simulating life. Years later, when I reflected on the work of a taxidermist, I thought about this need to preserve something that no longer lives, to maintain an aesthetic that deceives us and seeks to give new life to what has already lost it.
Biology, in its effort to study and understand living beings, creates botanical, entomological, and zoological collections as part of its research processes—serving an entirely different purpose, yet performing the same act of preserving, accumulating, classifying, and teaching.
Photography, in one way or another, intersects with these fields, using the same impulses to capture, collect, preserve, classify, and accumulate—in this case, images. This series carries many influences for me, from the first explorers and their visual records—drawings and images documenting what they discovered on their expeditions—to the desire to learn, preserve, and collect. These images are created using mid-19th-century techniques as a way to approach how those early records were produced in the past.
SURREALITIES
Throughout history, humans have sought to create what they long for, what they have lost—to imagine new worlds and dream—through art, literature, music, and, in recent years, technology. As human beings, we have an ongoing need to dream and escape, to live in other realities.
These images are a small collection of approaches to several theme parks created for recreational purposes—spaces where one can dream and, for a moment, believe in a reality that does not exist. They are created precisely to deceive us, to make us believe in a non-existent world—yet one that captivates us, that we enjoy, and allow ourselves to be carried away by, even if only for a moment.