Ricardo Barros: Nudes, Truths and Stories
By C. Ambiaso
AfterImage No. 2, by Ricardo Barros. (Silhouetted version of full-color photograph. A naked woman faces front in lineup with clothed men.)
Stories take many forms, including stories told through the human body. Photographer Ricardo Barros’s nudes address narratives of heroic proportions. He uses the body or, more precisely, creative manifestations of women’s bodies, to address larger truths. His recent work, along with that of sculptor Martha Posner, will be on view at the Dalet Gallery in Philadelphia for the month of May in a show entitled Fabricating Truths, Shaping Stories.
Barros plays with viewer’s perceptions by using photographs of beautiful nude women to address issues ranging from voyeurism to moral judgment. This photographer is meticulous in his craft. He amplifies the strengths of photography to tell stories with poetic expressiveness.
“In photography’s early days,” Barros says, “the prevailing maxim was ‘Photographs don’t lie.’ Today, of course, we believe that every photograph is potentially suspect. Even so, photographs can still express truths.” The works in this show are drawn from the photographer’s portfolio, Fabricated Truths. With a wink to Edward Muybridge, who pioneered the scientific use of stop-motion photography and, in 1877, proved that a galloping horse lifts all four hooves off the ground, Barros has painted a grid on his studio wall and conducted his own, pseudo-scientific experiments. He has used the nude as a controlled variable to see what implications it might engender.
“Every one of these photographs has been staged,” Barros says. “Every one targets a different idea. The baldness with which each composition is arranged makes it possible to move beyond the limitations of fact and to reconsider what we already know from a different perspective.”
Take, for example, his explicit, highly detailed color photograph, Lineup, represented here by an alternate version of that same photograph entitled AfterImage No. 2. In it, five clothed men, facing away from the camera, stand in front of a grid-painted wall. This starkly lit image is reminiscent of a police lineup, except that we cannot possibly identify any of the men. One woman stands in their midst, facing forward. She is naked.
What is one to make of such a tilted scenario?
“My instructions to the model were that she be perfectly neutral,” Barros says. “I didn’t want her body language to tip the scale in any direction. Most people will get the ‘unbiased identification’ reference right away, but what matters more are the judgments that immediately follow. Is this woman a criminal? Is she a victim of the men? Is she a slut caught in the net? Is this what she deserves?”
Leda's Revenge, by Ricardo Barros
In another color photograph, a nude woman shakes a feather pillow over her head, spewing a snowstorm of feathers. “That one was inspired by the myth of Leda and the swan,” Barros says. “Zeus was lusting after the beautiful Leda. He turned himself into a swan, descended to earth, and forcibly had his way with her. There are dozens of erotically charged paintings and sculptures depicting The Rape of Leda. William Butler Yeats’s poem of the account is considered to be one of his masterpieces. In every instance, these renderings relate the story from a sensual, male point of view. I thought I’d revisit that event from Leda’s perspective. That is why she is spilling out all the feathers. The title of this photograph is Leda’s Revenge.”
Barros’s photographs, the viewer eventually realizes, are not really about his nudes at all. The photographer stealthily redirects our attention to a mixture of social observations and comments, as well as to our perfectly natural tendency to be voyeurs.
“After I had made and printed the color photographs,” Barros goes on, “I realized that I was revisiting those images in my mind’s eye at odd moments during the day. These nudes continued to assert their presence. I carried around the impression that they made as an afterimage.
‘Afterimage’ – that word resonated with me – so I returned to the original photographs with the specific intent of reinterpreting them to create a new work of art. In a very literal sense, I was extending the creative process beyond the point of completion. I wanted to travel beyond the terminal station. The new photograph would be an ‘after’ image. I set about giving this notion a tangible form. While I was at it, I thought I’d steal the nude, too.”
Thus were born the AfterImages, a series of Black and White photographs included in this show. There are no nudes in any of these photographs, only black or white holes where the nudes used to be. Yet, especially for people who have seen the original color photograph, the nude figures are there as plain as day.
AfterImage No. 14, by Ricardo Barros
The AfterImages are minimalist in concept and execution. With relatively “so little” to look at, they demand absolute integrity from the content, composition and rendering in each presentation. “A second light bulb seems to go off,” Barros says of viewers taking in these works, “and it illuminates a smile.”
Fabricating Truths, Shaping Stories
Ricardo Barros and Martha Posner at the Dalet Gallery
141 North 2nd Street, Old City, Philadelphia, PA 19106
www.daletart.com Tel. 215.923.2424
Gallery hours: Tue – Sat 11 am – 6 pm, Sun 12 – 5 pm.
April 30th- June 6, 2010
Opening Reception: Friday, May 7th, 5-9 pm
Gallery Talk: Saturday, May 15th, 3 pm