Jorge Bacelar's "Ruralidade" series. Photographs from Murtosa, Aveiro.
An old man looks right in front of him. Into nothing.. His right hand holds a donkey by its reins, while the left embraces a foal that reclines gently over the old man's chest, its right year entangled on the long gray beard. The black foal seems to smile, and the older, bigger donkey, too, seems tranquil. The absent look of the old man betrays his actions. He is aware of what surrounds him, he's aware of the photographer and tranquilizes his animals for the shot. The dark background of the photograph and the white and gray tones that take turns between the donkey, the man's beard and the foal create a chiaroscuro that overwhelms the viewer. The magnanimity of the image would be even greater were the subjects not so close to us.
A different image, this time black and white, shows us an elderly woman, her hair covered in typically Portuguese-Catholic style. She looks forward, also into the void and holds in front of her a crucifix. The image says it all. The image of the crucified Christ is put, by herself, in front of her. The background, completely black, does not shows us nothing else. The high contrast of the crucifix leaves the image of Christ almost exclusively to the elderly woman. But we are allowed to share her faith, we are invited in.
This, as much as other photographs from the Ruralidade series by Portuguese photographer Jorge Bacelar presents us with a strikingly powerful roll of images from the village of Murtosa, in Aveiro, around 280 km north of the capital.
Bacelar is the village's veterinary. According to himself, in interview to Observador.pt (http://observador.pt/2016/12/19/o-portugal-mais-genuino-em-27-fotos-de-um-veterinario-da-aldeia/), the villagers are not clients, but friends, with whom he spend hours talking. The photos suggest, indeed, a degree of intimacy Bacelar shows us rural Portugal without showing the rural lanscape. This aesthetical (?), or methodological (?) choice is precious. His photography lacks a scientific look. To adopt Merleau-Ponty's term, Bacelar's camera 'inhabits' the world. It is part of its environment, it is lent to these people, in whose face we are able to read the mountainous, tortuous path of Portuguese land. Just the same, it shows work without effectively depicting the act of working. Work appears in the intimate relation of farmers and herders in relation to their animals. We are presented to a way of life in which work, as the transformation of nature by man, is still recognized as the product of physical and psychological energy, of an acquired expertise that allows people to recognize themselves in their work. It shows us the cumplicity between human and nature.
It is almost a typological photography, except for the fact that, although we are presented with the specificities of rural life and the diverse roles played by different people in relation to the land, Bacelar's photographs are not about what makes "a people", neither is it a study on vanishing traditions of some sort. It is neither nostalgic nor bucolic. It is sufficient within its own beauty because it makes clear that such beauty can only stem from the truth inherent in its own reality. It is a material photography that tell us of life histories (histories, not stories) through a mix of close up portraits and candid shots, face documenting and emotional events, which, assembled, embeds a mix of realist painting with that baroque sense of transience acquired by the play of light and shadow.
Finally, to this fruitful articulation of realism and baroquism, the catholic religious of the images transport us to vernacular Portugal. It is not an apologetic photography; it merrely allows the symbolism of rural life to emerge. It stands its ground as photography of Portugal, but it could, just the same, be a series somewhere in Brazil. This means it is an engaged type of photography. This is what allows it to inhabit its world. If it renounces to have any explicit argument, this argument arises strongly precisely in such renounce, once it does not supply any production apparatus, but makes justice to a communal, almost forgotten relation of production. One that is praised in eco-responsible arguments, but only through means of our 21st century "responsible capitalism".
Concluding, it is worth remembering Mia Couto's personal account of his work as a biologist. The award-winning Mozabiquan author narrates in E se Obama fosse Africano? (What if Obama was African?), how in his travels through Mozambique he encounters people who do not know how to read letters, but know how to read the world. In this reality, himself, Couto, is illiterate. It is the same relation that seems to be implied within Bacelar's photographs. Having learned to read, Bacelar invite us to join in the learning with him and his teachers.
The Ruralidade series can be found in Bacelar's fineart profile here.
