Accolade
Prof. Manfred Schmalriede
(Präsident der DFA, Deutsche Fotografische Akademie)
Pictures which change the world. What a dream! And in fact it is daydreams which turn people into travelers. Travellers to distant lands or to the fantastic world of carnival, in its mixture of everyday life and vision, celebration and work, this side and the other side. A photographic journey seems to make it possible to experience reality and fiction without any distinctions.
Victor de Castro takes us on a journey through Brazil, where we become acquainted with people, landscapes and again and again with situations and fragments on the sidelines of the past carnival. He seems to be telling a story with his pictures, but if we pursue the pictures they often refuse to continue the tale. Describing this process is superfluous because poetry loses its existence in viewed from the outside. Nonetheless it can be noted from a distance that these images presented in a book project thrive on their distinctions and their mingling in concrete juxtaposition on the double pages and their sequence.
The headline above it all evokes the myths and rituals of carnival, produces fictitious figures. The photographic journey follows the carnival into people's everyday life. The everyday normality of their lives strikes the observer as being puzzling, alien and sometimes absurd. On top of this is a mingling of different ways of applying photography. The individual images allow interpretations to be made, but when placed alongside each other they evade a plausible interpretation. The people's promiscuity provokes the sequence of the images. And yet an atmosphere of visual logic is created which does not require any explanation using words. The pictures frequently prevent a view of a reality which, when detached from them, would betray something of the country, the people or society. When taken alone each image suggests an openness which is seductive without deciding on one meaning. It is only the mixing of the pictures which enables a dialogue , but one which would not take place without us. Victor de Castro has succeeded in achieving his aim of "writing with images".