Maureen Bisilliat
Maureen Bisilliat (Englefield Green, Surrey, England 1931)
Maureen Bisilliat is a photographer. She studied painting in Paris and New York before settling permanently in São Paulo, Brazil, in 1957. In the early 1960s, she switched from painting to photography, working at Editora Abril between 1964 and 1972, on the magazine Realidade. She is the author of photography books inspired by the works of great Brazilian writers: *A João Guimarães Rosa* (1966); *A Visita* (1977), based on the poem of the same name by Carlos Drummond de Andrade (1902–1987); *Sertão, Luz e Trevas* (1983), inspired by the classic by Euclides da Cunha (1866–1909); The Dog Without Feathers (1984), based on a poem by João Cabral de Melo Neto (1920–1999); Chorinho Doce (1995), with poems by Adélia Prado (1935); and Bahia Amada Amado (1996), with a selection of texts by Jorge Amado (1912–2001).
In 1985, he exhibited a photographic essay inspired by the book The Apprentice Tourist, by Mário de Andrade (1893–1945), in a special room at the 18th São Paulo International Biennial. Other notable works include Xingu Tribal Territory (1979) and Lands of the São Francisco River (1985). From the 1980s onward, she dedicated herself to video work, most notably Xingu/Terra, a feature-length documentary filmed with Lúcio Kodato in the Mehinaku village of Alto Xingu.
In 1988, she was invited by anthropologist Darcy Ribeiro (1922–1997), along with Jacques Bisilliat (her second husband) and Antônio Marcos Silva (her business partner), to build a collection of Latin American folk art for the Latin American Memorial Foundation. She traveled with Jacques to Mexico, Guatemala, Ecuador, Peru, and Paraguay to gather pieces for the permanent collection of the Creativity Pavilion, where she became curator.
Critical Commentary
Maureen Bisilliat established herself in Brazil, where she has lived since the 1950s, working in the field of photography. Throughout her career, the technique became part of what appears to be a project of increasingly seeking ways to combine literary texts and images, which may be explained by her professional experience as a graphic designer in England. From the 1960s onward, she photographed Brazil as portrayed (and imagined) in the work of renowned writers, including Guimarães Rosa (1908-1967), Euclides da Cunha (1866-1909), and João Cabral de Melo Neto (1920-1999). In the books resulting from this photographic-literary project, photo captions are replaced by excerpts from the works, indicating a concern, even at the beginning of her career as a photographer—the book "A João Guimarães Rosa," for example, is from 1966—with making photography a kind of narrative element, whose subject matter sometimes suggests sequence, story, and rhythm. Part of this may stem from Bisilliat's work as a journalist, photographer for Editora Abril's Realidade magazine, for whom she produced one of her best-known works, the essay "Caranguejeiras." In a mangrove swamp in Pernambuco, she records the work of crab collectors, who immerse themselves in mud, covered from head to toe. Far from denouncing the harsh living conditions of the crab collectors, Bisilliat depicts their gestures and movements in the photos as a kind of dance. Sometimes her painterly side seems to influence the photographer, and sometimes just the opposite. Even after abandoning photojournalism, this concern with recording, and sometimes reclaiming, an "unknown" Brazil continues to guide much of his work.
This interest in documenting the backlands and the Northeast also seems to guide his photographic-literary work. After reading Grande Sertão: Veredas, Bisilliat travels, at the suggestion of Guimarães Rosa himself,1 in search of the settings where the book is set, in order to "witness this world." The result is the book A João Guimarães Rosa, which combines excerpts from Grande Sertão with images by the photographer. The book, in addition to drawing parallels between writing and photography, is, despite often directly linking theme and excerpt, almost a poetic-visual reinterpretation of Guimarães Rosa's work. If, to illustrate the phrase "Working is kneading your hands... that's what a countryman can do, even in old age," she uses a very literal image—an elderly woman working—the almost lyrical force of this image overrides any simply educational intention of showing the reader the world Guimarães Rosa portrayed, and gives way to a unique vision of Grande Sertão and, above all, of Brazil.
In the photograph that illustrates the phrase "I am from where I was born. I am from other places," for example, Bisilliat practically creates a new character for the book, a taciturn man with a rigid gaze, standing on the border between fiction and reality. This border is worth remembering; it is one of the factors that attracts Bisilliat to Guimarães Rosa's work: to discover what was real in the book, she, paradoxically, captures images that undecided between fiction and reality. Even in a typical scene, such as a cowboy driving a herd of cattle, the image seems to speak more of literature than of the real world. Even if the captions were journalistic in nature, the photo essay would be more poetic than reportage. This explains why Bisilliat abandoned photography and began dedicating himself to video. His documentaries carry some of the poetic force of his photographic work.
Note
1 MENGOZZI, Federico. Brazilianness. Conversation with Maureen Bisilliat. Nossa América, Memorial da América Latina Magazine, No. 21, 2004.
Reviews
"The themes of a Brazil sometimes forgotten or still hidden in the bends of the road, the vestiges of popular festivals, or the imposing figures of the Xingu Indians transformed Maureen Bisilliat into a pioneer, who somehow reminded the locals of slices of reality they were forgetting to document. (...)
(...) Gestures and clothing have been present since her earliest works, among them the rugged figures discovered in readings of Grande Sertão: Veredas or the photographic essays she published in the first phase of the magazine Realidade, among them the women on the edge of the mangroves - the Caranguejeiras - of Pernambuco (...)"
Casimiro Xavier de Mendonça
MENDONÇA, Casimiro Xavier de. Maureen. Jornal da Tarde, São Paulo, July 15, 1978. p. 30.
"Her photos never intended to document the crab hunt (...) nor did the epic mural, solemn as a litany of João Cabral de Melo Neto's incomparable text, serve as her guide. It was, as she confirms, an affinity: the poet decodes a reality and she deciphers it with another, coinciding language, in which the images evoke a tactile sense, the text is heard like music, the words trace lines of color in the poem."
Leo Gilson Ribeiro
RIBEIRO, Leo Gilson. In the mangrove with dignity. O Estado de S. Paulo, São Paulo, December 5. 1984.
"It's not with a simple touch of a stick that the magic of the space "The Apprentice Tourist" is born, at the 18th São Paulo International Biennial. It would be so easy. But it's not. The magicians (because there are many), united by the strength, charisma, and magic of Maureen Bisilliat, worked hard. They brought into the space the knowledge of passion, technique and faith, logic and emotion, competence, intuition. Ingredients that, fused together, provoked an explosion of beauty and enchantment (...) How can one explain, if not through the inexplicable force, the breath that allowed Maureen to accomplish a feat of this magnitude (...)".
Stefania Bril
BRIL, Stefania. Photographic reading of "The Apprentice Tourist". O Estado de S. Paulo, São Paulo, October 6. 1985.
Collections
Pirelli/MASP Photography Collection - São Paulo SP
Solo Exhibitions
1965 - São Paulo SP - Solo Exhibition, at MASP
Group Exhibitions
1971 - São Paulo, Brazil - Photographers of São Paulo, MAC/USP
1975 - São Paulo, Brazil - Xingu/Terra, Special Room at the 13th São Paulo International Biennial
1979 - New York, USA - Xingu/Terra, Margaret Mead Film Festival, Museum of Natural History
1982 - New York, USA - Xingu/Terra, Museum of Natural History
1985 - São Paulo, Brazil - 1st Photography Quadriennial, MAM/SP
1985 - São Paulo, Brazil - O Turista Aprendiz – Journey through the Amazon to Peru / via Madeira to Bolivia / via Marajó to Dizer Chega, Special Room at the 18th São Paulo International Biennial
1987 - Paris, France - O Turista Aprendiz, Special Room at the Salon de la Photographie de Paris/La Défense
1989 - São Paulo, Brazil - Teatro do Presídio, Special Room at the 20th São Paulo International Biennial, Theater Section
1991 - São Paulo, Brazil - 2nd International Studio of Imaging Technologies, Sesc/Pompéia
1991 - São Paulo, Brazil - Pirelli/Masp Photography Collection, MASP
1992 - Zurich, Switzerland - Brasilien: entdeckung und selbstentdeckung, Kunsthaus
1994 - San Francisco, USA - Contemporary Brazilian Photography: a selection of photographs from the Joaquim Paiva collection, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
1995 - Rio de Janeiro, Brazil - Contemporary Brazilian Photography, CCBB
1996 - Bogotá, Colombia - Imagenes de Brasil. Pirelli/Masp Photography Collection, Casa do Brasil
1996 - Buenos Aires, Argentina - Imagenes de Brasil. Pirelli/Masp Photography Collection, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes
1996 - Caracas, Venezuela - Imagenes de Brasil. Pirelli/Masp Photography Collection, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Caracas Sofía Imber
1998 - Rio de Janeiro, Brazil - The Image of Caetano Veloso’s Sound, Paço Imperial
1998 - São Paulo, Brazil - Amazônicas, Itaú Cultural
1999 - Wolfsburg, Germany - Brasilianische Fotografie, Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg
2001 - São Paulo, Brazil - Três Brasis, Galeria Marta Traba – Memorial da América Latina
2002 - São Paulo, Brazil - Photographs in the Collection of the Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo, MAM/SP
2002 - São Paulo, Brazil - Visions and Illuminations: Contemporary Brazilian Photography from the Joaquim Paiva Collection, Oca
2003 - São Paulo, Brazil - Photography Collectors’ Club of MAM, MAM/SP
2003 - São Paulo, Brazil - Labyrinths and Identities: Photography in Brazil from 1945 to 1998, Centro Universitário Maria Antonia
2003 - São Paulo, Brazil - MAC USP 40 Years: Contemporary Interfaces, MAC/USP
2003 - São Paulo, Brazil - Black Memories, Memories of Blacks: The Luso-Afro-Brazilian Imaginary and the Legacy of Slavery, Sesi Art Gallery
2004 - São Paulo, Brazil - Brazilian, Brazilians, Museu Afro-Brasil
2004 - São Paulo, Brazil - Song of the Eternal Day, Memorial da América Latina
2004 - São Paulo, Brazil - Photography and Sculpture in the MAM Collection – 1995 to 2004, MAM/SP
2004 - São Paulo, Brazil - São Paulo 450 Years: Image and Memory of the City in the Instituto Moreira Salles Collection, Centro Cultural Fiesp