Immensity, diversity and contrasts, three substantives that delineate the Amazon, the widespread land of Brazil’s North. Stories of the forest and the rivers comingle with tense urban narratives. Ana Mokarzel’s gaze is tuned into what is visible and what, although hidden, reveals itself in the images she captures, cut out of our daily universe. According to Roland Barthes, “Photography doesn’t (necessarily) speak about what no longer exists, but only and certainly about what was. This subtlety is decisive.”

 

What images are these which at times colored, at others black and white are taken from a time lived in, from an instant which does not repeat itself, from an adverse reality or one that persists, from a fragmented memory that can forget everything that was? Among these past instants and different realities, one observes traces of a beautiful landscape, an anonymous face, whether pained or happy, which lives in a distant place, or can be found on a street just down the way.

 

Regardless of the theme, of how the photographs are classified, the images show that which was, that which is. Ana’s sensitive vision looks for distinct realities, interacts with what was captured by the lens. Not directly with it, but with something that emanates from it and adheres to the instant of the photographic act. The formal concerns with color, with tones of gray, with framing, do not diminish the intensity of the scenario, the undecipherable remains and provokes a feeling that comes from the image and, at the same time, is within the beholder.

 

The lens come in and out of focus, at the same time defines planes, translating territories, not necessarily Amazonian. This land embraces different ethnicities, allows them to be seen in the cultural transit of a hybrid society which finds its footing in facing adverse conditions. Identities lightly touch landscapes, persons, grow strong in indigenous groups, in icons like the Ver-o-Peso Market, in religious and cultural representations like the Círio. Nevertheless, what delimits the Amazon Region is merely one of the facets of the images captured on film by Ana, which join others and reveal different places and cultures.

 

A gaze that goes far beyond a simple register is what remains in the end. The poetic subtlety of images conceived by one who perceives the world with delicacy and intensity is what persists.

 

Marisa Mokarzel