Which Photographer Inspired You at the Beginning of Your Career?

Abstract

In the article, the author described his work with photography from the perspective of influence on him by Rosângela Rennó, a Brazilian artist. The author took a look at Rennó’s series Matter of poetry, Minus-Value [Auction], Fantastic Realism, Experiencing Cinema, and Hipocampo. The author presented short descriptions for each project and methods of Rennó’s approach to photography, which concentrates on recycling the discarded photo information, on issues of memory and forgetting, changing context, and text. With Rennó’s series, the author contextualised his projects (in)visible polaroids, Palimpsests, Street Topographies, The Commuting, and TOY-OGRAPHY. The results address different concepts and ideas, but all of them in one way or another build a dialogue not only with the spectator, but also other artists, and Rosângela Rennó acts as a collective portrait of those. Replacing Polaroids with text, revealing hidden images behind the newspaper article, constructing new reality through montage techniques, exploring hidden possibilities in the photos of commuters in London underground, and hacking toy cameras to make them the instruments of philosophy – these are Lisboa’s strategies to exploit vast opportunities behind the image.