Photo: Luiza Sigulem

BY LEONOR AMARANTE

Photographer Luiza Segulem doesn't limit herself to recording bodies in motion: she challenges the logic of the gaze in a set of images that are part of the collective 34th edition of the CCSP Exhibition Program, inaugurated this Saturday (23), in São Paulo Cultural Center.

After an accident during a climbing workout at the gym, his life took a different turn. "I started this project in March of last year, almost as an excuse to get out and about again. With limited mobility and living in a hostile São Paulo, I found the strength to occupy public spaces, feel the city's pulse again, and resume photography, something I hadn't practiced in a long time."

Her idea was to explore scales and perspectives. That's where the portrait project came from, but not traditional portraits. She reflected on art history, on how portraits have always reflected status, gestures, and postures linked to power or social class. "Today, we see similar patterns in portraits on the internet or in magazines, always reproducing specific bodies, gestures, and points of view. I wanted to question that." So Luiza created a "photo studio," a kind of infinite background adapted, below the conventional height, to the height of her gaze when seated in the wheelchair, at about 1,40 m. Circulating through different points of the city, she began inviting passersby to interact and pose for her, respecting the limits and possibilities of each body. "My purpose was an invitation to think about what we consider natural in the circulation and presence of bodies in urban space."

It all began five years ago, just before the pandemic began, literally a month before the world shut down. "It was the Covid period, and that's when photography became a part of my daily life again." Confined to her home, Luiza began to capture the people who visited her. These portraits became more than simple images: they were attempts to preserve fragments of presence in a period marked by the suspension of time and the fragility of memory.

After years of absence, when she abandoned photojournalism to dedicate herself to psychoanalysis, she rediscovered in photography not just a craft, but a way of elaborating on the lived experience, of transforming absence into trace and the instant into permanence.

In her photographs, Luiza tensions the body, urban space, and everyday gestures. Her practice is not limited to the simple act of recording; it is, above all, a critical exercise, in which photography becomes a reflection on the limits of the norm, on the social framing of bodies, and on the power of reinventing the visible.

With a strong photojournalist profile, having worked for newspapers such as Folha de S.Paulo and magazines such as Brasileiros and ARTE!BrasileirosLuiza wanted to return to photography. "Having done a lot of portraits, my idea was to deconstruct the norms and think of a different way of looking at the world and people. My perspective was also that I could create a question with this." Luiza invited people who passed by to interact and pose for her, but always keeping this limit in mind, each person controlling the extent of their body.

The project's presence in the squares is stimulating because it provokes fragmented experiences that she also sees as performances. "Some people create situations that have a bit of dance, perhaps a bit of sculpture, based on what I propose." Conceptually, that's it, but from a practical standpoint, it's more complex; she depends on people to help her get around.

As she expands her work across different territories, she never loses sight of the interplay between public and private. "The first location I worked on was Praça da República, focusing on high-traffic areas. Then I moved on to Guarapiranga, the North Zone, Parque do Trote, the Bixiga market, and then on to other areas, until reaching Oscar Freire and Iguatemi." In each neighborhood, she experienced different actions and postures. The characters portrayed are always passersby, all in constant motion. "There are also those who simply pass through the area, coming from elsewhere and who don't stay, dissolving into the crowd and merging with other bodies."

The project as a whole is related to psychoanalysis, according to Luiza. "My idea was also for people to experiment with their own bodies and feel their limits. I proposed something that people, in general, don't do." She herself confesses that she doesn't know if she would participate.

The various scenes recorded by Luiza remind me of Merleau-Ponty, in a phrase that is not textual, but conveys the idea that “the body is the vehicle of being in the world.”


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