PUBLIC PROGRAM | ESTE FOCUS | Renate Graf
Renate Graf, artist (Austria)
In conversation with
Oscar Bonilla, photographer (Uruguay)
Introducede by Reginart Collections
Sponsored by DKS & SANCOR Seguros
Renate Graf started photography mainly through literature and poetry. Images are often created in the photographer’s mind while reading poetry, for instance. A photographic camera started accompanying the artist during her travels in order to document her readings in such special environments, which include the south of India, Morocco, China, Alaska, Russia, Yemen, Cambodia, Italy, Germany and Austria, where she was born, and France where she lives. Renate Graf also created unique images of Anselm Kiefer’s studio, whose was her partner for many years. Writers and poets such as Fernando Pessoa, Rainer Maria Rilke, Tagore, T. S. Eliot, Edmond Jabès, Paul Valéry and Herman Broch are a constant source of inspiration. Cinema plays also an important role in her work, and film directors such as Win Wenders, Jean-Luc Godard, Werner Herzog, Visconti and Tarkovsky are important references for Renate Graf to transform, through her singular eye and in an unique way, images into presences. About her work, Renate Graf – refers that: « I am not a photographer in the classic sense, my images exist to serve a different purpose from those of any true photographer, they are neither complete nor conclusive. Nor are they perfect photographs as of a photography seeking technical perfection. They work not only as image, but as language, as signposts pointing towards meaning… they do not define, they witness, and in the vast cultural variety of an universe they are a language by itself, my language to describe what I see. They are my own language to try to describe the world as I see it.”
Renate Graf works mainly with black and white films and analog photography. The photographs are often printed in situ, and at times worked further back in her studio. She also created handmade books with original prints of her photographs, which are particularly remarkable. In 2019, the gallery Rui Freire – Fine Art co-produced Renate Graf’s first solo show in Portugal, entitled The Photographer’s chronicles: thoughts become images 1992 | 2019, the show included 180 works portraying twio decades of travels, from the South of India to Anselm Kiefer’s studio. In March 2021 at the invitation of the Embassy of Tashkent, Uzbekistan, presented an important exhibition at the House of Photography of Tashkent. In January 2022 is scheduled an exhibition at the CER Modern in Ankara, Turkey. In September 2022 Renate Graf will show her work at the MAC Rio de Janeiro – Niteroi, the iconic museum of Oscar Niemeyer.
Oscar Bonilla was born in Montevideo, where he currently lives and works. He begins to work in photography in the early seventies. He lived in Sweden between 1974 and 1986, where he studied Communication at the Institute of Sociology of the University of Lund and Photography at the Institute of Art of that same city. Professor of Photography in the curricular and extracurricular courses of the Cinemateca Uruguaya Film School, between 1996 and 1999. Teacher of basic Photography courses, Photographic Project Workshops and Photojournalism in the Bachelor of Communication Sciences, Universidad ORT Uruguay, between 1996 and 2000. Teacher of the Photographic Project Workshop at the Goethe Institute, between 2000 and 2005. Teacher at the Film School of the Dodecá Cultural Center between 2005 and 2010. Between 1995 and 2016, he was photo editor of the Semanario BRECHA, a weekly of which he is currently a collaborator. He has been a guest panelist at national and international events related to photography, curator and jury in several contests. He has exhibited his works in Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, United States, Canada, Puerto Rico, Colombia, Cuba, Spain, having been selected to represent Uruguay at the V MERCOSUR Biennial (2005). and at the IX Biennial of Havana (2006). He has been honored in 2009 with the Silver Morosoli award for his career in the field of photography. He is the director of the Academic Technique in Photography, at the Facultad de la Cultura of the Universidad CLAEH, and directs his own workshops at the Espacio Salamandra, Montevideo.
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