ENTRY DESCRIPTION
Backdraft Sight

In this work, the naked body in front of the photographer's lens acquires a new role. One that subverts and is predictable. Instantaneously, a new narrative enters the scene: the observer becomes the muse of each one of the images and the model becomes the spectator of their own observers.

With this idea, the photographer proposes an inversion of the direction of sight. The public is presented with a photo, stops being a by stander and transforms into their own protagonist; an observed object through the newly seeing eyes of the model.

A subject's shift in position between work and spectator acts as if they were in front of a mirror. A mirror which image reflects not the nudity of the muse, but our own nudity.

This provocative and challenging sight has the power to leave us freer to seek responses to the fundamental questions that preside within all of us.

AUTHOR
Ricardo de Vicq was born in 1950 in Rio de Janeiro and has been based 30 years in São Paulo. In the mid 60's Ricardo learnt to draw and paint with the artist Ivan Serpa at the Modern Art Museum, Rio de Janeiro. He started to work as a photographer, shooting artists' portraits. His personal work has been featured in exhibitions in locations including Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Paris, Florence, Pistoia, Los Angeles, Vermont, Berlin. In 2014 he was selected to exhibit his work at the Biennale D'Arte di Asolo in Treviso, Italy. He was the first Brazilian photographer to be awarded with the cover of Graphis Photo Annual in 1994. His work has been awarded at Cannes, N.Y. Festival, London Advertising Awards, Clio Awards, The Art Directors Club, Graphis Photo Annual and Conrado Wessel Foundation among others.
Ricardo's relationship to photography goes far beyond meeting necessities of work. Through photography Ricardo expresses himself and establishes a connection with the world. It's in the photographic process where his thoughts and feelings, questions, ideas and stories jump from the imagination and come to fruition. Ricardo creates to revel in the pleasure of it.
"To take a picture is to reveal a melody that composes itself through two silent instruments; the camera and the eye for it. It's an intuitive act when I let myself be guided by my emotions. An intention is born, an idea, a concept, that tells me which direction to turn. When I take my camera in the midst of that feeling, emotion takes the place of reason within me. That is what I seek to find, be it in a landscape, a person or an object. Everything carries feeling in its own way. In doing this, I feel that I´m somehow synchronized in my time."

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