BIO - ARTIST STATEMENT - THE KEY- WHAT IS PHOTOGRAPHY
2008
I am convinced that any attempt to restore harmony in the world can only rest on the renewal of personal responsibility.
A.TARKOWSKY
Ana Ribeiro dos Santos
born in Lisbon
Completed Photography course IADE Lisbon 1972
Introduction to Cinema AR.CO Lisbon 1973
Life model workshop AR.CO Lisbon 1982
Completed Anthropoanalysis course at the Anthropoanalysis Society Lisbon 1982
Solo Exhibitions
RECONNAISSANCE photography at Arquivo Fotografico da CML 2000
PAINTING Arco-Iris bookshop Lisbon 2001
PAINTING Galeria-do-Braço-de-Prata Lisbon 2002
PORTRAITS Studio 19 Easthampton MA USA 2005
EXTINÇÃO Sala do Veado MNHN Lisbon 2006
Group Exhibitions
PHOTO/COLLAGES Galeria Grafil Lisbon 1977
FEIRA DE FIM DE ANO Galeria Grafil Lisbon 1977
MAYO 80 AR.CO Lisbon 1980
EXHIBITION OF MODERN ART of the SNB Lisbon 1982
2 PAINTERS LER DEVAGAR bookshop Lisbon 2000
e-motion International show of photography Castelo de S.Jorge Lisboa 2003
NINETEEN WOMEN OF GREAT PHOT.. Studio 19 Easthampton MA USA 2004-05
PARAHIBA DIGITAL slide show João Pessoa Brasil 2005
PARAHIBA DIGITAL II slide show João Pessoa Brasil 2006
Books
CONSTRUCTED IMAGES by Ana ribeiro Santos 2008 –printed in USA
http://www.lulu.com/content/2511240
SOUTH-NORTH by Ana Ribeiro Santos and Jukka-pekka Kervinen collaborative photography 2008 - printed in the USA
http://www.lulu.com/content/1939052
Ana Ribeiro Santos
aribistos@gmail.com
tel:+00351-913522701
http://www.arsdomain.com/
THE KEY . . .
GEORGE Orwell in his Collected Essays(1968) has described the eart of that experience which gives rise to a child’s feeling of helplessness and dispair. In a memoir he tells us that he had just been beaten by the headmaster of his boarding school:
…..I was not even now crying because of the pain..The second
beating had not hurt very much either. Fright and shame seemed
to have anesthetized me.I was crying partly because l felt that
this was expected of me, partly from genuine repentence, but
partly also because of a deeper grief which is peculier to
childhood and not easy to convey : a sense of desolate
loneliness and helplessness, of being locked up not only in a
hostile world but in a world of good and evil where the
rules were such that it was actually not possible for me to
kep them.(Orwell’s italics.) (p.382)
Despair such as this has the effect of making our inner self alien to us, regardless of whether our personality develops in the direction of rebellion or not adjustment to norms.We will subsequentely cling to outer forms
whether they are those of society’s official ideology or of an opposing one. It is because we are alienated from our inner world-which causes it to appear to us as formless and anarchistic and hence threatening-that we cling so firmly to these external forms in the hope of preserving a sense of our own identity.
[…]
The distinction between rebellion and adjustment is a fundamental one.
Only rebellion makes authenticity possible,but it must lead to a sense of community with our fellow human beings.if it is directed only against something,it becomes an end in itself and results in an overemphasis of one’s own importance.This amounts to a rejection of the search for the true self and eventually produces a self without a heart. The dangers here are not the external ones the individual encounters but fear of the terrors of loneliness and fear of chaos and insanity.
[…]
It is sympathy and love that make possible the unfolding of the true self. Henry Miller expressed it poetically in his book on Rimbaud.”Everything we are taught is false, Rimbaud protested in his youth.
He was right,utterly right. But our mission on earth to combat false teaching by manifesting the truth which is in us…..The great miracle is to unite all men in the way of understanding,The key is Charity “(Miller 1956,p143)
Arno Gruen “The Betrayel Of The Self “
What is photography?
A framing of the real, or a gaze which questions the conventional truth of the real? And what is the real? My perception of it, or just it, in itself, regardless of whether it is looked upon? I look at Ana Ribeiro dos Santos' photography, and these questions become more imperative each time.
I would say at this point, that whilst one can look without seeing, one cannot see without looking. How does the photographer look, and what does he see?
Surely not the same thing we ourselves see, confronted with the finished photograph. I look at Ana's photos, and I try to see them. To be multi-perceptive, alas, I begin by seeing them with thedecoding gaze of rationality – the figurative heritage that photography carries with it, and shares with painting, although less so the latter than the former, seen as we have always been driven to link the photographic register more to the physical than to the metaphysical – a crystal lens, a focal distance, a photosensitive film. But in the end, does not even the poet use existing words to write with? Did not Eliot say that he was trying to make new lines out of old words? And what if we allow ourselves to move beyond the vice
that is rationalisation? What if we profoundly believe that we do not know what this is, unless we allow it to merge with us, totally, and
promiscuously?
Discovering this grandeur of spirit, and not resisting it, A.R.S.'s work takes me on a journey, a journey which – although the photographs are hers –is nevertheless my own, personal, and probably unrelatable to anyone else. I see silhouettes, anthropomorphic shapes, textures similar in form to the
macro and micro perceptions of the universe seen through, at one end, the electron microscope, and the super telescope at the other – lands: which would be inaccessible, if not for our devices and our ingenuity bringing them to view; which are undeniable; which are unsettling.
The fact that Ana Ribeiro dos Santos unveils them through a gaze only slightly removed from the world of banal evidence, not allowing her gaze to settle upon the inanity of perception – here is what truly fascinates me on these journeys that she offers me into the depths of the mystery of imageand resemblance.
Manuel Vicente
Lx 2005
Artist’s Statement
I am convinced that any attempt to restore harmony in the world can only rest on the renewal of personal responsibility.
A.Tarkowsky
As in any other doctrine, but especially in Zen, we should never consider exterior manifestations or demonstrations as having a goal per se; they are merely indicating where we should search for facts .
D.T.SUZUKI
The Master Painters have long been an influence on me as a photographer: from Fra Angelico and Grunewald, to Rothko. Tai-Chi, Pina Baush and ancient religious music were with me in my creation. When I take photographs, in that very moment of looking, there are no longer streets or people, but already the plural registration that long exposures allow – where contours fade away, leaving coloured shapes. These shapes, if they attract us, puzzle us too, in that they make it difficult – sometimes impossible – to find a conducive narrative, of the type which reassures us of the things we hold dear: offering confort over anxiety.
In 1991 I wrote about the destruction of iconicity: now I’d prefer to think of my main interest as lying with the possibility of showing what our eyes cannot see: an analysis of the dislocation of the referent.
Colour is of major interest to me.
I expect to realize this series in 50cmX50cm format.
Here is my suggestion . . .
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