Encontros da Imagem

Recyclants

B-Lounge da UMinho, Campus de Azurém

Campus de Azurém, Av. da Universidade
4800-058 Guimarães
Monday→Friday: 9am–8pm

LANDSCAPE VS STUDIO
A difficult place becomes a photographic studio. We are in an exterior: Antonio Pérez’s photographic studio in Agbogbloshie. Pérez approaches chaos in a subtle way, a zone of lights and shadows. He introduces his small “trap” and tries to order that chaos. The new stage facilitates the elision of borders between models and photographer, between landscape and studio, a place that temporarily acquires a new use: gazing, posing. The most contaminated place of the African continent, a dumpsite of the West located far from its frontiers is, for others, a workplace.

IN FIELD AND OUT OF FIELD
The photographer tries to isolate the gaze of the model in his portable studio and manages to confront the place (a landscape) to the photographic factor (a studio). A devastating place that o ers an enormous distance between spectators and models. A recurrent game for the photographer, who connects several worlds and establishes a close relation between what happens in the diferent photographs, between that which is in and out of field. By offering a wider point of view, he includes what we were perhaps not supposed to see, offering multiple attention focus, making our reading all the more complicated.

'RECYCLING'
A landscape filled with debris receives a new use. The act of recycling, which is so highly regarded in the West, shows its poorer side here. Antonio Pérez’s photography holds a structure from which the first world runs away. The idea of giving a new use to something which others consider obsolete does not appear in these images. Everything suggests a sick place, which the photographer pauses for a few moments throwing a recycled gaze over it, although it may better resemble a dream, a theatrical drama or a moment of rest. This is an act of recycling that contaminates and that is diffcult to digest.

Miguel Romero

Antonio Pérez

He began his professional career as a photographer, developing photographic documentation projects in Sub-Saharan Africa and giving workshops around the image in different countries. In 1997 he founded with his partners Davir García the company “África Prospectiva” to give support and logistical support to the International Architecture Studio “FISA”, for works on habitat and international development cooperation. Trained as a photographer with higher studies in Art History (University of Seville, Spain) and Fine Arts (University of Seville, and Fine Arts (University of Cologne, Germany), his work has appeared in solo and group exhibitions, in prestigious publications such as "Dictionary of Spanish photographers" (2014), or "Dictionary of Andalusian photographers" (2014) and has been recognized by different national and international awards. Regular collaborator active in various educational centers, art galleries and institutions, as well as NGOs and foundations related to international cooperation. In this last year we highlight his work with the team of "La Digitalizadora de la Memoria Collectiva", carrying out works around the recovery of social memory in neighborhoods of Seville, the "Carlos Pérez Siquier" photography award for social commitment of the "Real Academia deBellas Artes de Granada" for his work on climate change in fishing villages in Ghana and Togo, the exhibition "New Contemporary Ichthyologies" at the photography festival "JipFest" in Jakarta (Indonesia) on plastic pollution in the marine environment, the exhibition "The sea moves, the sea moves us" in "FotoLenzburg" (Switzerland), the exhibition and award "Earth Photo 2021" of the "Royal Geographical Society" in London (United Kingdom) on climate change and “The destruction and construction of the image". Photographic training workshop in Tunisia with intervention in the medina of Tunis. In collaboration with the Government of Tunisia and the Spanish Embassy (Tunisia). He belongs to the collective of photographers Cobertura Photo, where in addition to teaching photography courses, he participates in various national and international photographic projects. In terms of teaching and training Antonio Pérez is a professor in the Communication, New Media and Journalism program at CIEE, collaborator of VERTO and also at the University of Seville linked to the subject of photography within the Geography and History of this university. He has been teaching at Cobertura Photo since 2005, giving courses on photographic projects and conceptual photography. He is also part of the teaching team of the Master in photography of this school.

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