This week, the website In the In-Between introduced me to artist Rodrigo Pinheiro, who lives and works in Rio de Janeiro. According to Pinheiro, his series Tornaras - Portuguese for "you will return/become" - exhibits photographs that "take the form of a long and intimate letter to someone's memory." I was drawn to this project because of the overall color palette that adds a softness to the images. As I read more about Pinheiro's work, I became more and more intrigued by the effects of this documentary process after the end of a relationship. In the segment provided by In the In-Between, Pinheiro talks about the involvement of his ex-partner, J, in his series, and how he eventually had to replace J's body with that of his friend, a performer. The artist mentions that their collaboration allowed them to recreate what he had lost, "sculptures that materialized feelings, ghosts." However, he also clarifies that everything was brand new, redefined.
"Photography came as a rescue. Before the camera is the performance, the self-portrait and, paraphrasing a master of the juxtaposition between documentary and fiction, the dual imaginary function of cinema. This performance was made while we forgot it was a performance."
"It was curious to think of how I would share mourning with someone who did not live any of it."When I read his explanation, I associated this 'redefinition' with the influence of time on memory, on the effect that each recollection has on the remembrances that one romanticizes. Pinheiro's friend describes the new relationship as a form of mourning, and how the project was meant to transform the mourning process into something. I especially liked the artist's reflection on "the cry of the ending and the cry of seeing the series;" one, he explained, was differentiated by the longing that immediately follows separation and loss, and the other indicated a "getting out of it." Pinheiro had not revisited his departed relationship merely to reflect and ponder, he did so because he had not yet left and wanted to leave. The recreation of the love, companionship, and passion through performance photographs reminds me of the idealized memories we retain as vessels of escape from the pain of loss, and the significance of allowing these remembrances to live on while also recognizing their permanent existence only in that which once was and which is no longer.
Friend of Rodrigo Pinheiro, on performance and fiction in photography:
"Photography didn't expand, photography has always been expanded. When photography came up it came as a fright, it came as a shock because it came as something that is not from here, and because it is fictional, it is not ours. This photojournalism thing, documentary photo, the so-called photo truth, it doesn't exist. Photography is a fiction. It is a way of looking at reality and making what you see a fiction. To create a cut."
All images © Rodrigo Pinheiro
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