The secret to good photography is not to just look, but to see, according to Pauliana Pimentel Valente, a Portuguese photographer and artist currently curating the “State of Affairs” exhibition at Cezayir Restaurant Gallery in Istanbul.
“For a photographer there is really a difference between looking and seeing. When you are beginning to be a photographer, you can only look. I think a good photographer, what makes a good photographer, is that one starts to see,” Valente told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review last week.
“A photographer, when he starts, is looking in a window but when he looks at a mirror, he looks at himself, it’s very difficult. I am still discovering what I am, what I want to see, what I want to show that’s inside me. This is what I am searching for, what I really seek,” she said.
Ninety-one photographs were chosen for “State of Affairs” from among the hundreds taken by members of the Portuguese collective [kameraphoto] in various places around the world during one week in July 2009. Valente and two others of the 13 photographers involved in the project, Nelson d’Aires and Valter Vinagre, came to Istanbul for the installation and the exhibition’s Nov. 18 opening.
“For me and the other photographers we must be aware of what is happening around and capture the moment of what we see… A photographer is someone who likes to discover new ways of dealing with different kinds of people. The photographer must not just look, but see. In a photographer you can have both, or only one. This is my philosophy and maybe it would not be for another,” Valente said.
“When you see, you look at yourself. You look into a mirror. I want to find my own language and this makes the difference between a great photographer and a normal photographer. A normal photographer just looks. You look. But you see people’s faces. I was advised to look for myself in my pictures and in doing so to discover my own language, my own feelings,” she said.
While Valente said every photo did not have to tell a story, she noted that there were a number of examples from her own work in which the photos have told a story.
“I travel a lot and I like to know different countries and go deep inside. For instance, if I go to a new country for me, I can use Istanbul, for this was a new country for me. Shall I take a picture of the seaside or shall I go by boat to the other side? I take a picture of the sea and the mosque and, yes, just that. It tells a story but if you don’t know the story, you can just see the picture as a depiction of a mosque,” Valente said.
“My kinds of pictures are with people because for me photography is with people. I like to tell stories about people. But I’m also trying to find my own story,” she said.
No initial plans to become photographer
Valente said she did not initially plan to become a professional photographer but only wanted to travel and learn about different cultures. As a result, she said she went to Tibet when she was 18 and began taking photographs before gradually heading out on other trips.
“For four or five years I did this and then I met a famous photographer, a Magnum photographer who came to Lisbon to visit. So I decided to do a workshop with him and I showed him the pictures that I’d shown to nobody. I showed the pictures from India, Nepal, Tibet, all my trips and he was very impressed with my pictures. And also, on my trips I wanted to write notes,” Valente said.
“‘You should show these to a magazine, write the story, because you are really good’” she recalled the photographer saying.
“So I got up the courage and as at the time I was coming from Iran, I had pictures and wrote the story. It was immediately published,” Valente said.
She said her family took her decision to become a photographer badly, given that photography is a far more unstable profession compared to geology, her subject in school. “I had to decide because you can’t do both in a good way.”
Shortly after taking a photo workshop at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon she was invited to work at a contemporary art gallery. At about the same time [kameraphoto] called her to join them.
Photographing in a collective helps work
“I like being in a collective because being a photographer is too lonely. And I need to be with people to share knowledge, to know other photographers’ work and to be stronger because when you are in a community you are much stronger. Nowadays it is so difficult to be a photographer, and you can share your knowledge, your ideas,” she said.
“Normally we have one important meeting per year when we meet and go to a countryside home and we spend three days discussing ideas, problems because in a collective you do face problems. It is much bigger. We shout, we cry, we discuss, not stopping from day until night. And in the end we agree,” Valente said.
Being in the collective has not stopped Valente from accepting other assignments. Last year, she spent five weeks retracing a trip taken by 22-year-old Armenian businessman and entrepreneur Calouste Gulbenkian through Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia in 1891.
Her photos from Gulbenkian’s trip will be used in a book soon to be published by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.
New horizons
Following her time in Istanbul, Valente said she was planning a book on transsexual prostitutes in Portugal.
After learning that people in the transsexual community were wary of a journalist doing work on them, she said she secured the help of a transsexual friend who introduced her to others as a photographer and serious artist who wanted to do an art book on them.
“So I found five men who were receptive and since them I’ve gone to their houses with my camera. They are great. I am enjoying it so much. They are very special persons. They suffer but they are strong and eloquent and very sweet and rich,” she said.
This year the photographers at [kameraphoto] are engaged in a project called the “Republic Diary” because of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Portuguese republic. They take whatever pictures they want every month, meet to discuss them and then put them online for people to vote on.
“In the end we will make a book and an exhibition about Portugal. So it’s very good because there aren’t very many good, interesting pictures about Portugal. It’s an old country and not many photographers want to do that. You have to be special to do that. So every month we are doing this and I think in the end it will be a great work,” she said.
“A State of Affairs” will continue at the Cezayir Restaurant Gallery through Dec. 24.
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