The portraits made on Copacabana beach, in Rio de Janeiro, between 2015 and 2018, honor the various forms of female beauty.
Whether they are cariocas, paulistas, people from Buenos Aires and Parisians, want to show off their bodies covered in butterflies, dragons or other animal figures, young women meet in Copacabana, in the prestigious site of Guanabara Bay, a scenic space where they are staged naturally, facing the sky and the sea, changing colors.
The portraits made in the form of triptychs simultaneously provide a point of view on the landscape and on who appropriated the role of Venus. the blue of the sky, like the foam, should not, although, make forget that Venus is here under the protection of the Virgin, to from Copacabana, whose mantle is made of the blue of the sky.
Copacabana Venus
Raphaël Blum is a traveling photographer, that travels places to register people. Travel between the self and the other, but at the same time the photographer is a citizen of the world, worth saying, of a world of people and places without borders.
The photographer travels the world looking for his characters and picks them up one by one, In the middle of the crowd, in the course of everyday life. Chases anonymous passers-by through the streets of big cities, by the roads, but don't surprise them with your camera, on the contrary, asks them to pose for a portrait and establishes a direct relationship, eye to eye, between photographer and subject.
It interferes very little with the images., and always establishes a figure and background relationship – the person and his place. Always lets the individuals portrayed play their own characters. Photograph them from the front or back, without taxes, leaving them at ease and, and, enhances body expression and its meanings.
From this dialogue Raphaël captures surprising individualities, strong in themselves, but which enrich and overflow in the other photos of the series “Copacabana Vênus”. The portraits are clippings of a social plot, of the same urban time, from the same place – are fragments of the collectivity. All the photos emerge from a vast and unique social fabric.
Raphaël leans over people in their seats, and the location of this photo shoot is Copacabana, to“sea princess”, and there are thebeaches… full of light… your sands, your sky so beautifuland your muses, your mermaids always smiling…
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This photo essay held in Copacabana, was certainly inspired by the “Birth of Venus” by the Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli. The Venus of Botticelli or the Venuses of Copacabana, no plural, of Raphaël Blum, they are born in the waves and reach the sands driven by the breeze to radiate beauty and sensuality.
There is always in your photography the notion of the individual as part of a broader context.. I am unique, but I recognize myself in the other. Or as the poet Mário de Andrade wrote – “I'm three hundred and fifty, but one day at last i'll find myself…”
Raphaël Blum chose a cast of actors to form a set of individualities. In this photographic essay, the bodies Are luminous like the sun and exude chimeras.
Fábio Magalhães, artistic director of MAC/Sorocaba (SP)
Exhibition “Copacabana Venus”
Period: 17/06 to 31/07/23
Curated By: Fábio Magalhães
Where: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation Arts Center (RJ)