You can't think about reflecting on photography without remembering the great 'philosopher of the image' Boris Kossoy. Going through some things I have saved here, I found an issue of Continuum magazine (an excellent publication!) that was dedicated especially to photography - every month they set a different theme. The August 2008 issue published an interview that Boris Kossoy gave especially to the magazine.
It's always great to follow Kossoy's ideas to open up our horizons of photographic knowledge. After all, photography isn't just a recorded image! I found the interview very interesting and so I'm going to share it with you. It's a bit of a long read, but well worth it. Check it out, in the text by Mariana Lacerda.
Every photographic image holds one, two, three... countless narratives. This is the thought that permeates the entire work of Boris Kossoy, a São Paulo-born photographer, professor, social scientist and pioneer in tracing a history of Brazilian photography. For example, he wrote the famous book Hercule Florence: the Isolated Discovery of Photography in Brazil (Edusp, 3rd edition in 2007), in which he tells another version of the story of the invention of the daguerreotype - the first technique for "printing light", announced in France in 1839 and attributed to the Frenchman Louis Daguerre. He is also the author of Dicionário Histórico-Fotográfico Brasileiro: Fotógrafos e Ofício da Fotografia no Brasil 1833-1910 (Moreira Salles Institute, 2002). With more than 40 years of professional experience, Kossoy has been in charge of curatorships and is currently a member of the board of the Pirelli-Masp photography collection. His portfolio includes images in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the National Library in Paris. Over time, however, a single sentiment runs through all his work: the option for the fantastic in images that portray simple gestures, such as a family photo and a look contained in it.
Alongside your career as a historian of photography, you also work as a photographer. What came before?
Before photography came a child's eye. One of the photos in my last exhibition [at the Pinacoteca de São Paulo in 2007, in which Boris Kossoy retraced his 40-year journey through photography] was of a bush. I realized that in many of my photos that dirty little bush appears, as does the image of my alter ego - Doctor Américo, that little gentleman. I think these are examples of the persistence of the gaze. In other words, a gaze loaded with what is being placed inside the kaleidoscope that we carry around our necks. These images have been merging and repeating themselves throughout my life.
And how do they become meaningful?
The image is diabolically divine. That's an extra-religious conclusion I draw about photography. Because it has one meaning for one person and reveals something different for another. In addition to the meanings they had for the author of the image. Every photograph is a world apart, which I call "parallel worlds". That was the name of an exhibition I did in 1998 at the Curitiba Photography Biennial, in which I took a trip back to my childhood. That little bush, for example, was the look of the first images I remember. I discovered this a long time after photographing it in different situations. I also discovered a chain of other themes that are related to my childhood gaze.
Continue reading "The mysteries of photography - Boris Kossoy
Muito mais que especial, eu diria. Desde 1998 o fotógrafo argentino dá aulas em um curso básico na sua escola de fotografia para pessoas portadoras de “descapacidade mental”, como ele define. Foi depois de morar um tempo no Brasil e nos EUA que, ao retornar ao seu país natal, resolveu dar aulas de fotografia para aqueles julgados “incapazes”.
