©Gilmar Simυes

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Bitter Geography

                                  ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜
 

Travelling through time and discovering exotic spaces; describing pain, anguish and quarrels; configuring political, social and ideological realities; distributing lost information about past performances; organizing the space inhabited by memory and illusionist innocence, deciphering the borders of myths that perpetuate themselves with their footsteps and relics; conserving the past and enjoying the fantasy sold in grams or in a line and observing lifestyles, improvised beauty, the conscience of lost nature, the illusory nature of free trade, transport me freely in time and space, without the bars that separate us from one world of fantasy to another; from one lacking any authenticity to one full of fleeting lights that glimmer on a moving pavement; from the presumptuous myth of modernity to the universal and historical perspective; from the naοve dream of someone who loves you to a disfigured and violent life, from nationalism to the identity crisis, from the distance that I see and the displacement of cultural identity, at times with exuberance and excess and at others with pain and disgust.

The angular stone that fills our gaze, immersed in this cultural and historical process full of inflections, accents and dialogues; it’s like the drought or hunger that insults our intelligence, it’s manipulated to destroy volumetric certainties, to annihilate contrasting convictions and sow dubious contours, and in this ark filled with colour, only the chosen few can establish a photographic model based on the nightmare of the darkroom or on the shade of the of a digital perplexity that shows us a new and intimate way of seeing. We learn to see the world purely and innocently, no, we learn to see the shades of our own ignorance. This real effect that fills us with stupor whilst sitting on the sofa or strolling through luminous rooms seems to belong to them or to others. In the end, this discourse and practice, very often contradictory, stems from sectarian positions that are difficult to accept/adapt in the world of photographic creation, which is so full of revelations about the contemporary nature of representation.


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