A TELA DE UMA HISTÓRIA QUE NÃO SE ACENDE
BY ANA PEREIRA
Ana Pereira (Mozambique, 1974) has a Master degree in Audiovisual Communication, majoring in Photography and Documentary Film, by ESMAE - Instituto Politécnico do Porto. Among the many articles written: "O Rosto na Escuridão" for ARCHIVE, as well as the essay "Novos formatos editoriais, velho, novo, velho" for the "Reflex" collection. In her texts she addresses the evolution of photographic portrait in the context of documentary photography as well as the evolution of narrative structures in documentary photography. She participated in several solo and group exhibitions which we highlight "O mundo das pequenas coisas - imagens de um presente em pausa" at the Centro Português de Fotografia, in Porto. She was teacher for the discipline of Image and Sound at the Escola Artística Soares dos Reis, in Porto, also teaching Graphic Design and Publicity, at ESEIG/IPP and teacher for Audiovisual Communication Technology degree, at IPP. She is currently "chief photographer" for Mademoiselle Photo - photographic reports. In her work, the practice of the scene photography in the context of theater has been an important theme.
Synopsis
A body of work about Porto downtown movie theaters. The closed ones and/or running parallel activities other than exhibiting films. To search the images, ghosts, memories and particularities of each room. Once the doors are opened and the lights are on, life returns to fill these spaces.
Just like those scenes from the movies, as soon as the lights come on, life returns to the amusement parks and slowly one begins to hear the sound of carousels and of people in the background.
In these cinemas, one can feel the smells and see the visible traces of the stories of the past, in the images, in the messages, in the photographs, in all memory remembrances. Whenever I sat in the chairs looking at the screen, I could almost feel the noise of people coming in for the next session. As if those times when I was shooting, were only short intervals between films, between stories.
Artist's statement
Yes words have weight.
Volume, size and color.
The words are almost the entire field of what we established with each other.
The images are the materialization of the world within.
They are also the factual proof of what is, what was, what could be.
I am interested in beautiful things.
In beauty there is no conflict and I like that no duality.
A bubble rest, a peaceful navigational float.
One of these days, I found a sentence of Chuck Palahniuk that goes something like this:
"Your whole life is the discovery of who you were!"
I thought it was good for a skeptic.