Portrait - NOMINEE: Felipe Queriquelli

The project 'Threshold Life' is based on Staged Photography and Narrative Portraits. I had as reference modernists and post-modernists photographers that were really iconic from the idea and concept of Staged Photography, as well as, Jeff Wall, Gregory Crewdson, DiCorcia, Cindy Sherman, and so on. The project is being developed in Raglan, Hamilton and surroundings, all these towns located in Waikato Region, in New Zealand. Behind the aesthetic of Staged Photography and Narrative Portrait, the project is based on theories from Anthropocene (the new epoch that has been discussed from all geologists and also philosophers and thinkers). The idea of the Anthropocene is strongly based in the fact that the planet Earth is passing through to a different geologic era, and the main cause for this change comes from the human actions throughout the millenniums, since 10.000 years ago in Agriculture Revolution, the exploitation of Americas by Europe, the Industrial Revolution and in last but not least the nuclear tests since Second Great War II. The project also uses theories from Deleuze, like the Nomadism and Terreatolization. Deleuze is a great reference for this photograph project, from the terminologies above mentioned because I am trying to find a nomad place, that from my perspective I don't know yet and I never been before, and this is mean Nomadism. This is a place with no boundaries or territories. It's a place to be discovered, for an experiment. Before shooting, I get my car or I go for walking through the towns, trying to find some potential locations for shooting when I find something I go to the place. In this last step, I have a kind of documentary approach in order to find who lives there, I invade the place literally, knocking the door and present myself, explaining the project. Most of the time the people are ready to listening and as a lucky, normally those people match perfectly with the idea of Location (scenario) + Person (character). I look through the place after been permitted obviously and I decide the scenario, the position of the person or people. After that, I become a Director indeed, I require to my persona of Director of Theater and DIrector of the movie in the past and I act giving some images, these images that bring to them allow them to build something new, which means, that for a moment come up a Persona, a Character. Persona is nice to entitle this because is the same person in fact, but at the same time is someone else that probably even them didn't try before. This situation configures in a proper Staged because of me, as a photographer, the scene is built deliberately in order to create something that is interpreted or create indeed and not just 'real'. Then, this is become different from Documentary or Photojournalism because of that. However, that moment is a mudsill or a threshold, because of the reality of the place, the person involved. So the mix between reality and fiction is always present and from this emerges a new thing. This new thing is the space that photography as an Art leaves for the audience. This is space is created with the idea of Punctum from Barthes, in his book Camera Lucida, he writes about this idea. For Barthes, punctum is something that fascinates the body; it is the field of the unspeakable image: that which is silent in the soul of the observer because the eye is not capable of capturing. He only skates on this surface, for the punctum presents himself in the blind field of the image: "Whatever it is that it gives to see and in whatever way, a photo is always the invisible: it is not what we see" ( BARTHES, OC, V, p.793). Normally, the images that I give to the people are related to doubt, bad and god and none, different elements, right and left and space in the middle, vacuum or oxygen, and other space. These stimulate cover the idea of the Anthropocene as an era relate to the collapse on Earth, a lot of changes (social and ecological), but in the end nobody knows the certain of all this, nobody knows the future indeed, but is a fact that changes are coming and it will have to accept and rethink by everyone. The portraits in question are common, from common people, working with abandoned places, but also normal places (no abandoned). In general, the people are looking for something, with the eyes focus on something that the audience can't see, but can't imagine and interpret from the perspective of the location, the 'character' and obviously from the audience's experience indeed.

About author:
Nanci and John had a forbidden love. I was born. I played on the farm with my grandfather and learned to ride horses at three. With three years old I broke my arm riding a horse. I did theater in my teens and thought I would be a good lawyer, I gave up halfway and decided to study Arts. Bachelor in Art Education in 2008. I met a beautiful girl and decided to get married. We moved to Australia in 2009, where I studied Documentary and Direction of Photography at Metroscreen film school. Two were not enough, we decided to become three. Cauê was going to be born in Australia, but we decided to return to Brazil. He was born in 2011. I participated in the first cinematographic productions, the following year the first advertising productions in video and photography. Now mature, and all three walking well, we decided to change course to a new land, New Zealand. I love photography. I've been participating in several commercials and advertisements for brands such as FIAT, Spotify, Mizuno, among others. I also developed a social project with the indigenous people of the South of Brazil, teaching them to photograph. This project is still being launched in museums, universities and public places in Brazil. Now, in new lands begins a new journey in my life, as photographer and student. Yeah, I am doing masters too, master of Arts - Wintec/Waikato and my research involves Staged Photography and Narrative Portraits. The idea behind the scenes is relating base on concepts like Anthropocene, Nomadism and the Punctum of photography. The process is a mix of 'documentary photography' in a sense that I make the scouting location through the town that I live and knock the door as an unknown person talking and explaining about my project. Then, when I get the location and person or people ready, I try to construct the scene using the real elements available in the place. However, being a Staged Photography, my big interference regards to the directing of the people. From that, I am able to find a new persona, as a character, but still a 'real person'. This space, that I am calling the 'space in between' is where I am able to point something interest, doubting, suggestion, a real mudsill, and threshold, that would be complete in the future by the viewer with a huge and maybe infinite possibilities ahead. This institutional work must be presented, framed and printed until January of 2020. The exhibition will be shown in February of 2020 in Hamilton/Waikato/New Zealand. Now I am working out in producing new pictures, finishing the theoretical part and trying to raise funds for framing, printing, and exhibition. Anyway, life goes on. Carpem Diem! This year I was awarded with one prize from MIFA(Moscow International Foto Award) - 2019, 2nd place Nature Category.