If there is something that marks this contemporary time is people’s obsession with building their own images. Obsession wich is not limited by desire’s fisicality for unreachable aesthetic patterns, but goes through a more subjective plan, about the image that we picture of what is beyond the flesh, our values, life style, our consumption power.
Whenever I search in literature for the meaning of “moral” the question that outlines this concept is always essencially the same: what do you do when no one is watching?
But today, in a context of massive social media users, of consolidation of what have become the spectacle’s society, I stumbled on the search of a new concept, capable of answering another side of this same question: what do you do when everyone is watching?
In the absence of aswers I keep through the path of questioning. If the digital era took the self-image’s management to another level, where everyone has become the editor of their own life’s timeline, what are the values behind the decisions about what to show and what to hide? What exists outside the frame? And isn’t photography itself an art that walks in this same territory?
The decision making of what to show or hide isn’t in the very core of the photographer’s work? Would it be possible to find a single picture that might be considered a non-intencioned fragment?
The restlessness with this questions is this photographic serie’s spark, an invitation to reader’s subjectivity to dive in those same ideias, looking for the construction of a more attentive look to the intentions behind these fragments and visual positionings.
Marcelo Sant’Anna is a brazilian photographer, advertising, documentary and film editor specialized in editing and color grading. What first started as a passion for movies and cinema’s lighting evolve to love for narratives and still photography. Because of his perception of verbal communication as a limited manifestation of language, his work is to persue the power and possibilities of storytelling through images. He worked in many national scales productions in film industry editing and coloring shorts, full-length movies and documentaries. He also was invited to give workshops at Sesc Arsenal Mato Grosso and Federal University of Mato Grosso about two topics, “Editing: the cinematographic language” and “Cinema and colors”.
Currently, his research is dadicated to two photographic series he’s developing. “Espécime”, where he explores poses and the contrast between light and shadows to create unexpected figures with nude non-models. And “A imagem que habito”, where he builds a fineart visual narrative that questions people’s relation with the construction of their own images.
Instagram: @sant_fotografia | @marcelo_sant
