Cláudia Jaguaribe: A Visionary Artist’s Tips on Innovative Photography

The famous visual artist shows you how to use photography to interpret the world

When you think of photography, you generally imagine its traditional, two-dimensional format. But artist Cláudia Jaguaribe’s work proves photography can be transformed into countless formats and media. It can even be a starting point that opens up a world of possibilities.

Her work goes beyond traditional photography and takes the form of books featuring elaborate graphic projects, photo-sculptures and installations.

Having achieved international fame, her works form part of major collections and are housed at places including the Museu de Arte Moderna (São Paulo), The Inhotim (Brumadinho, Brazil), the Instituto Itaú Cultural (São Paulo), the Instituto Moreira Salles (Rio de Janeiro), the Victoria and Albert Museum (London), the Maison Européenne de la Photographie (Paris), the Instituto Ítalo Latino Americano (Roma), and HANGAR (Brussels).

In this edition of our Domestika Maestros series, we visited the artist’s studio in São Paulo to look back on her career and understand the creative process behind works that defy tradition.

Photography as a tool

For Cláudia, photography is a tool for understanding and editing the world. “I look at something, I take a photo of it and then I bring it back to the studio to rethink the image I’ve taken,” she explains.

She creates a kind of database of her images, which allows her to use the whole picture, a crop or an edited version combined together with others in a kind of collage.

Materiality

The artist finds a different solution for each work. Cláudia’s photography comes to life in the widest possible range of formats: photo-sculptures, installations and books: “I love extracting photography from its two dimensions to make it more sculptural.

This kind of photographic prospecting suggests new ways of seeing,” she affirms. Her exhibitions are a multi-sensory experience and many of her works have a playful character, like Calipso, which plays with small and large scales.

Hybrid landscape

Hybrid landscape is the result of the encounter between nature and the urban environment, and it’s a recurring theme in the photographer’s work. “I have a constant theme that takes on different formats depending on the moment,” she explains.

For example, her Jardins Imaginários series combines an urban or degraded background with plants and natural elements. Cláudia explains that she didn’t take the photographs of these plants with the final work in mind, but that the concept came to her gradually, through analyzing her archives and the opportunities to bring the work to life.

]More than taking a photo

Technology’s progress, and all the resultant opportunities, makes it important for artists to know how to use all of our new resources. The artist recommends using technology as a tool, rather than submitting to it. “It’s not just about taking photos, you have to interpret what you see, take sides” she adds. For her, photography is a way of belonging to the world, of affirming a collective identity based on relationships, and it shows. Any artist can develop a gaze that seeks to realize something beyond the obvious.

English version by @studiogaunt

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