O olhar na periferia: A trajetória de Luiz Braga através de Retumbante Natureza Humanizada

Abstract

The vast work of the photographer from Pará, Luiz Braga represents the construction of the gaze of an artist who develops an identity based on a visual aesthetic that dialogues with different fronts, such as photography, cinema, plastic arts, publicity and advertising, among others. In this sense, Luiz Braga over 40 years sought and developed a visual production about the Amazon that represents a perception of this space beyond the stereotypes already constructed in other images. However, making the Pará-Amazonian periphery a place of visual power, mainly due to the intervention made by these characters portrayed by the photographer with the use of color and their relationship with the landscape. In this way, these visual manifestations captured by Luiz Braga create a broad dialogue that ranges from anthropology as a method to create relationships with the ones to be photographed, as well as from the visual arts in relation to the montage of scenes, the capture of light and color and image subversion through Nightvision. In the exhibition Retumbante Natureza Humanizada, the anchoring point for understanding this trajectory developed by the photographer and seeking in it those points of singularity that make him a reference in the field of authorial photography. As a methodological aspect we resorted to interviews with the photographer, friends, work partners, curators. People who are somehow related to the artist or the exhibition itself. Research was also carried out in the photographer's archives and in people who had some connection with the artist who could contribute to the narrative construction around the exhibition and the images. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Luiz Braga started to participate in Lives on Instagram channels, talking about his trajectory with curators and critics. As a theoretical point, Walter Benjamin, João de Jesus Paes Loureiro, Roland Barthes, François Soulage, Roberto Signorini and others were sought as a way to understand the narrative process of the photographer's trajectory, as well as the understanding for reading his images. This research was funded by the University of the State of Pará through a training incentive grant.