Frederico Câmara 15 October – 17 November 2010
Untitled (guangzhou 0107), 2009
Beauty and the Beast by Stephen Feeke
Someone told me it’s all happening at the zoo. I do believe it, I do believe it’s true.1
When I first saw Frederico Câmara’s photographs, I initially did not understand I was looking at images of zoos. It was with my own sculptural bias at the fore, that I took Câmara’s work for images of another artist’s installation. Was it Beuys? Or maybe by an Arte Povera artist? I should say (in my defence) that my mistake was only momentary, but on reflection, looking at the same work some three years later, I feel my reading wasn’t entirely erroneous. Not knowing it was an animal enclosure and seeing no creatures anyway, what I saw was objects displayed in stark white spaces with what I took to be great purpose and economy. The materials I saw were those of sculpture, like wood and metal, used in combination of form, colour and texture. The overall appearance was so casual that I knew it had in fact been carefully constructed, with each item precisely placed in relation to each other and to the space they were in. Câmara is not the first artist to find inspiration at the zoo, though in the past it was usually the animals that were the attraction. Painters such as Oudry immortalised a menagerie and Stubbs painted Queen Charlotte’s zebra, her cheetahs and even a kongouro (sic). More recently, it was common practice for students at the Royal College of Art to take the life drawing class out of the studio and into Regent’s Park to capture beasts there. Whilst on occasion one might just sneak into his frame, it’s not the animals that appeal to Frederico at all and in fact, he travels to the world’s zoos assiduously trying to avoid them. Instead, it is the idiosyncrasy of their unnatural environment that inspires him. What he finds in the enclosures themselves has all the beauty, horror and pathos of human existence and what we learn through his examination of happenings at the zoo, tells us more about us than it does about the animals.
Untitled (Weihai 0304), 2009
In Man and the Zoo (1969) by Heini Hediger (a leading Swiss zoologist), a cartoon illustration shows a man at the zoo staring inquisitively at a llama; a sign on the railings that separate them, helpfully says ‘LAMA’. In the next frame of the cartoon, the llama is shown looking back at the man aided by a sign saying ‘MENSCH’.2 It might be funny to think that the man was the entertaining exhibit in the zoo and not the animal, that their strangeness and exoticism is reciprocated by ours and indeed that we are therefore equally odd species to each other. In reality there is no such role reversal and we are very much the dominant species. So whilst looking at a Câmara, the experience of his zoo photographs is very much of being on the outside and gazing in. In some examples a metal cage keeps the viewer back. Câmara doesn’t try to avoid the grille or shoot round it, rather he allows it to form a defiantly bold grid right across the foreground, and we are left trying to peep through the bars into the space beyond. Even when an animal enclosure is glazed, the flatness and frontality of Câmara’s picture plane creates an impenetrable barrier that prevents us entering further. His is not the familiar recreation of a logical space which we often see in a work of art, which we might imagine ourselves occupying via our minds eye. Instead we remain very much in our world, in our own time and space. Of course we are fascinated and compelled to look at what is or (more rightly) what is not there. However our role is very much as observers from our side of the bars and on this side of the picture frame. In addition, the locations Câmara often chooses to record are less than inviting in themselves. Often there is something desolate, hostile and uncomfortable about the surroundings he finds, which may look more medical than zoological. Harsh lighting, tiled or metal surfaces and concrete floors offer cold comfort to whatever animal is normally housed there. Indeed, it can be sad and shocking to think any creature could ever survive there. But it is also the very absence of an animal that can make Câmara’s work so unsettling; it feels as if something bad may have happened here and it feels like death. In Câmara’s works, it often feels as if time has been suspended and the atmosphere is so still and literally lifeless, that it’s as if all the air has been sucked out. Nature abhors a vacuum though, as does the power of our imagination and so we the viewer start to fill the void. Hence we look for equivalents for what we know is missing and a concrete tree trunk starts to look like a crocodile and fake vines appear like snakes. Indeed some of the more elaborate interiors Câmara photographs appear so vibrant that they themselves might be sentient and alive.
Untitled (Shenyang 0117), 2009
Untitled (Taiyuan 0309), 2009
Câmara has said that the institutions we create are ‘organic’ and have a kind of life just as we humans do: ‘in Brazilian Portuguese we even call them “organs”. In their symbolic flesh they have the same strengths and weaknesses that are our own. Their tissue is subject to changes, death and renewal. They are a reflection of our lives.’3 If our institutions are a mirror of ourselves, then we might therefore conclude that each generation gets the ones they deserve. If this is the case, what do zoos say about us? And by focussing on them, what is Câmara saying about us? Today zoos raise emotive issues and have an ambiguous status despite their current incarnation as centres of research, conservation and preservation. During their surprisingly long history, they have always been sites of some contention. So whilst there are delightful stories of Henry I’s polar bear hunting for fish in the Thames, by the 16th-century there were already concerns being voiced about cramped conditions behind heavy ‘grates’. The wonder and spectacle of the ‘natural’ world was a great attraction and occasionally animals achieved celebrity – like Clara the rhino or Jumbo the elephant – with feeding time being especially popular (18th-century visitors to the Tower of London zoo could pay an entry charge or bring a live cat or a dog to feed to the lions).4 Câmara is aware of this ambivalence and probably knows this is precisely why they make interesting subjects. However he has a documentary style of working and remains neutral, without passing judgement on the rights or wrongs of what zoos do. Instead, he records what he finds there leaving us to respond in whichever way we feel and he utilises the same calculated approach whether he is photographing a painting store, a derelict library or an animal enclosure. In fact Câmara talks about his work as reportage,5 and it can have a cool, dispassionate edge. Yet conversely, despite this detachment, his work can also possess an extreme beauty. Sontag has noted that ‘photographs create the beautiful’,6 echoing Benjamin’s much earlier observation that photography ‘can no longer record a tenement block or a refuse heap without transfiguring it’.7 And Câmara agrees that beauty is a problem for photography; for him, the impulse to create something beautiful is both instinctive and unavoidable. Hence, when he points his camera he will automatically start constructing the most satisfying image possible: looking for formal qualities of composition and colour, locating the best angle, finding overlooked details and reformulating them – of course he also has to sit and wait for long periods waiting for the animals to retreat, so he has the time to think and plan the final work. And by embracing such subjectivities, Câmara can give the ugliest cage the depth and richness of old master paintings – those elaborate Dutch still lifes for instance which are at once bountiful and lush depictions of nature and memento mori.
Untitled (Weihai 0203), 2009
Untitled (Shanghai 0315), 2009
Before taking up photography, Câmara initially studied drawing and painting at Escola de Belas Artes/Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (Brazil), and it was painting that first drew Câmara to a zoo. He had been photographing the natural landscape but found himself unable to find or express anything new, whereas the painted tableaux to be found inside cages or enclosures were intriguing. The diorama, complete with arrangements of model trees, rocks and water, approximate an animal’s natural terrain, which might be a jungle, a snow covered mountain, a lake or river or a desert as appropriate. It is the majesty of nature presented in a microcosm, and without animals to distract us the artfulness of the conceit comes to the fore. Who and what are these backdrops for, one wonders? Do they make the animal feel more at home? Or do they only make us feel better about plucking a creature out of its natural habitat by approximating its normal surroundings? More than just showing us the strangeness of something we might have overlooked, these panoramas have allowed Câmara to ruminate on the ways the world can be perceived and represented. His photographs are not just his reflections on the zoo but very much part of the world in which they appear.
Simon, P & Garfunkel, A. ‘At the zoo’, from the album Bookends. Sundazed (1968) Reproduced in Blunt, W. The Ark in the Park. Tryon Gallery (1976) p.246 3 Câmara, F. Henry Moore Institute Newsletter, no. 63, (December/January 2005/6) 4 For a brief history of zoos, see Blunt, W. The Ark in the Park, pp.16-21 5 Conversation between the author and Frederico Câmara (27 October 2009) 6 Sontag, S. On Photography. Penguin (1971) p.85 7 Benjamin, W. ‘The Author as Producer’. In Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, vol. 2, pt. 2 (1931-34). Livingstone, R and others (trans.); Jennings, M; Eiland, H & Smith, G. (eds.). Harvard University Press (2005) p.775 1 2
Untitled (Kunming 0103), 2009
left: Untitled (Weihai 0219), 2009 this page: Untitled (Chongqing 0309), 2009
The Project
Zoological gardens have been created for the appreciation of animals and plants foreign to Europe, brought from the colonial territories that were then considered exotic to the European taste. They occupy an ambiguous position in society, as they can be seen as both a space of protection and a space of imprisonment. Protection comes from the zoos’ aim to be a place for conservation, research and education. Imprisonment derives from their early format as ‘menageries’, a place for exhibition of exotic species of animals meant to simply entertain the human curiosity. At the same time good and bad, this ambiguity of function and form is a reflection of our need to care for our environment against our inability to re-create in the zoo an environment as perfect as nature itself, or to preserve it in the wild. Photography has the power to make us ‘re-view’ a situation after it has transformed it into an image. For example, no one stops at an empty cage when visiting a zoological garden, because the objective of such a visit is the contemplation of the animal. The cage is in this case just a background or stage. However, with the cage transformed into an image without the presence of the animal, the cage becomes the subject. This shift in focus from the animal to its artificial environment results in a series of observations related to science, the environment, as well as art and religion, in questioning the act of creation. This project has been realised by creating a one-person expedition to photograph the main zoos and aquariums in China. This proposal draws from a wider research project that is to create a World Atlas of the built environment of zoo cages, divided by regions or countries photographed. Zoos not only represent this geographical division in their own collections, but they also reflect in their design, the ‘styles’ or cultural aspects that are peculiar to the visual culture of the country to which they belong. Previous work for this research project was done in Germany, the UK, Romania, Canada, France, Switzerland, Norway, Singapore and Japan. There are different reasons why I chose China for this project. Despite not being a former colony of a European country, China’s images, artefacts and materials were considered exotic in the past, and in some cases still are today. In that sense, it is pertinent to ask the question: How does a country seen as exotic respond to the idea of the exotic in the design of its zoological gardens? In practical terms, China offered a large geographical area with a not so large quantity of zoos. This large area offered a number of different geographical landscapes that proved influential in the design of the zoos, such as karst mountains, desert, seashore, and tropical forests. There was also the possibility to observe how social changes in China, from a poor to a rich country, were reflected in the design of the zoo cages, and in the public’s behaviour.
Harbin Urumqi
Changchun Shenyang
Kashgar
Beijing
Dunhuang
Yinchuan
Shijiazhuang Taiyuan
Lanzhou
CHINA
Xi’an
Xiahe
Chengdu Chongqing
Kunming
Qingdao Zhengzhou Kaifeng Xuzhou Luoyang Huainan Taizhou Suzhou Nanjing Shanghai Wuhan Hangzhou Ningbo
Hengyang Guilin
Weihai
Weifang
Changsha
Lijiang Dali
Tianjin Dalian
Wenzhou Sanming
Yangshuo
Guangzhou Nanning Macau
Fuzhou
Xiamen Shenzhen Hong Kong
zoos photographed zoos missed zoos added places of historical interest train bus aeroplane boat
The expedition started in Hong Kong on 1 July 2009 and continued clockwise westward until Kashgar, going back east up to Harbin and then down to the south back to Hong Kong. It ended on 25 September lasting 86 days. Looking at the results of this expedition, it is possible to identify some recurring themes in the design of zoo cages that are peculiar to China. Some of those themes, such as the representation of the Chinese landscape in the cages, specially the karst mountains in the area of the Yulong River, and the use of techniques similar to the ones used in traditional Chinese painting, were expected before the trip started. I did not expect to see the general use of sculpture and painting techniques to represent trees, wood and stone, or the use of photographic wallpaper murals to cover the background of the artificial landscapes of the cages. Also unexpected was the decoration of zoo cages with painted cartoon characters, confirming the old perception of the zoo as a place for human entertainment.
Frederico Câmara, September 2010
Untitled (Nanjing 0411), 2009
Frederico Câmara was born in 1971 in Governador Valadares, Brazil, and has lived and worked in London for the last ten years. In 1993, he graduated in Printmaking from Escola de Belas Artes (UFMG, Belo Horizonte) and in 2004 he obtained an MA in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Art, London. Fellowships: Unesco Aschberg and Lademoen Kunstnerverksteder – Trondheim, Norway; International Research Center for the Arts, Kyoto University of Art and Design – Kyoto, Japan; La Chambre Blanche – Quebec City, Canada; Nordic Art Centre – Dale, Norway; Henry Moore Institute – Leeds, United Kingdom; Akademie Schloss Solitude – Stuttgart, Germany Awards: Brasil Arte Contemporânea, Fundação Bienal de São Paulo – São Paulo, Brazil; Darwin Now Award, British Council – London, United Kingdom; Pavilion Commissions – Leeds, United Kingdom; Marcantonio Vilaça Award for the Visual Arts, FUNARTE / MinC – Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Solo exhibitions: Gallery 32, Embassy of Brazil – London, United Kingdom; In an Ideal World, Pavilion Commissions – Leeds, United Kingdom; The Henry Moore Institute – Leeds, United Kingdom; Landscapes, Galeria Noua – Bucharest, Romania Selected group exhibitions: Territories of the (In)Human, Kunstverein Stuttgart – Stuttgart, Germany; New Photography: Pavilion Commissions, Djanogly Art Gallery – Nottingham, United Kingdom; 50 Years of Brazilian Art, Museum of Modern Art – Salvador, Brazil; 10° Salão da Bahia, Museum of Modern Art – Salvador, Brazil; Rumos Visuais, Instituto Itaú Cultural – São Paulo, Brazil
Acknowledgements The artist would like to thank: British Council (Dr Fern Elsdon-Baker, Hayley Foulkes, Sarah Gillett, Gemma Latty), Stephen Feeke, Four Corners (Dave Than), Fundação Bienal de São Paulo, Pavilion (Anna Reid, Gill Park, William Rose) and Royal College of Art.
Ministry of External Relations
Credits
Celso Luiz Nunes Amorim Minister of External Relations
exhibition management & catalogue design João Guarantani
Antônio de Aguiar Patriota Secretary General of External Relations Ruy Nunes Pinto Nogueira Undersecretary General for Cooperation and Trade Promotion Eliana Zugaib Director of the Cultural Department Mariana Lima Moscardo de Souza Head of the Division for Cultural Promotion
printed by Aldgate Press, London Catalogue circulation: 1,500 copies © texts: the authors and the Embassy of Brazil in London © images: the artist
Embassy of Brazil in London Roberto Jaguaribe Ambassador Carlos Pachá Head of the Cultural Section
Opened in 2001, Gallery 32 is an exhibition space maintained by the Embassy of Brazil in London. Hosting a varied programme of exhibitions, screenings and talks, Gallery 32’s main aim is to promote Brazilian culture in all its vibrancy, with a focus on modern and contemporary art, architecture and design.
gallery 32 32 Green Street | London | W1K 7AT +44(0)20 7399 9282 | www.gallery32.org.uk Tuesday to Friday, 11am-6pm | Saturday, 11am-5pm
Published by the Embassy of Brazil in London for the exhibition Frederico Câmara 15 October – 17 November 2010
gallery 32
detail of Untitled (Ningo 0413), 2009