Manoel Nunes

 Photo reference: Paul Koop

Photo Gallery

Tropical Arcadia – the New People
 

Besides presenting social reality, I would like my work to tell of beauty, of aestheticism, and of that which is also important: the nature of the Brazilian people and their meta-language that exists in this cultural space. Perhaps those signs, also a dialogue between the past and present. What do we know about all the things that encircle us. Every object in art, an endless bridge between beholder and artist, a tunnel between worlds. I speak here as a person about people and what we think we understand most of all... our feelings. Knowledge that protects us from danger, drives us and allows us to recognise beauty. It is the logic of illogicality. It is light and shadow. A mirror without an eye. Love?




The trip through all places, as I had planned it, was not possible in the time available . I avoided large cities like Rio or Sao Paulo. My aim was to capture not the entire geopolitical territory of Brazil, but a deeper human insight that can only be gained from up close. I found these people in places where they still possessed their natural biorhythm that had not been eaten away by the gluttony of modern civilisation.
Ana Teresa Matos Farias ( pdf: 650 kB )

Adriele Santiago Cardoso ( pdf: 600 kB )
 

These New People I am speaking of, the motifs of my enthusiasm – it is of them that I took pictures, human portraits... as Gilberto Freyre best describes in his book ( Casa Grande e Senzala ) about the influence of African culture on Brazilian culture:

"...this influence is evident in our tenderness, our exaggerated expressiveness, our highly emotional Catholicism, the way we walk, our music and all



our essential expressions of life. It is the influence of our black nannies or wet nurses who lulled us to sleep, who breast-fed us, who nourished us with the porridge they had made with their own hands. It is the influence of the old woman who told us children stories about ghosts and animals, of the mulatto girl who rid us of our first 'bicho de pé' (a type of flea), who taught us about love on a creaky camp bed ... of the Negro boy who was our first playmate."		 Concita Voss ( pdf: 600 kB )
 


The eyes of the project:
Super-Angulon 5.6/90 XL, Apo-Symmar 5.6/150 L,
Apo-Symmar 5.6/210 L

Camera: Arca Swiss Monolith  4x5“.
Light:  Broncolor.
Film development and scans: Megalab AG - Köln.
Camera assistant / making-of photos: Paul Koop

All the portraits were taken using the three Schneider lenses.
It was very important to me that the images were reproduced authentically.

Manoel Nunes

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