Ivan da Silva
On a canvas that was once white, the infinite meets the finite, the wave offers itself to the sand: “The transition between sea and land.” A trace, a physical mark of an unrepeatable moment, the chemistry of light as a natural phenomenon through a dip, “almost like washing the image directly in the sea,” Ivan da Silva tells us, as he unfolds the sheet stained with blue streaks, a piece that reflects a bit of what he has been developing from an artistic standpoint: the image in its sculptural dimension. “Although it represents something I see, it is not necessarily figurative. It lies more in the realm of the abstract. It is not a completely flat piece, which is something I have always been reluctant to accept in photography.”
Limbo, the surf, the moment when the world prints a copy of itself. Ivan (Rio Tinto, 1989) looks back and realizes that many of the photographs he produced had three-dimensional qualities; they were capable of occupying physical space and transforming it. “It’s much more about experimenting,” comments this self-taught artist who seeks every day to “invent the profession.” “When I was growing up, there was no one around involved in the arts. So, being an artist meant painting pictures. The profession never seems to be fully realized or solidified at any given moment. It’s built in a totally experimental way, almost without structure. Things just happen. And the way the idea meets the world makes it more real. And that’s what exists: the idea meeting the world and then transforming into something.”
“Direct action,” he argues; photography as a realm of invention, intervention, and resistance, of education and a tool for creativity, which he considers necessary and essential. A creative laboratory in which the camera is not indispensable—and never a passive recording device, but rather a tool for exploring one’s own perception and the limits of visual language. Rather, chemistry as a brush, the manipulation of sensitive immersions, metamorphoses that are more or less controlled, more or less random. Images as sculptural objects, as movement and emotion. And the act of photographing, of creating an image, more important than the final object. “I apply the specific chemical to a certain spot on the image and it reacts in that way. It’s not entirely controllable like a figurative painter, but it’s close to the expressionists.”
Ivan studied (and practices) optometry. He was drawn to visual anthropology and the chemistry of photography. He completed the Professional Photography Course at the Portuguese Institute of Photography and earned a Master’s degree in Image Design from the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Porto. Today, it is at Túnel, a self-managed community space in the Campanhã neighborhood of Porto, that his vision takes shape and expands, and where discussions and collaborations with other creators take place; between the carpentry shop and the darkroom, between the kitchen and the view of the garden, between the vernacular techniques that reach them from the other side of the world and which they apply at Bananeira, the spontaneous community garden that sprouted on the slopes of Fontainhas, between acrobatic fabrics and hard-won freedoms—and far removed from that moment when Ivan felt “absolutely sad” upon coming face-to-face with the art “we know” from white-walled galleries, international exhibitions, and expressionless spaces. “I felt: ‘Look, this isn’t really the way…’” From there, he began developing activities and games for specific groups, teaching how to read images through everyday life (using “strings, stones, solids, sticks, and objects found in the trash”) and making things tangible.
It no longer frightens him, but he still lives with the legacy of wet collodion, the photographic process he fell in love with and has continued to use to this day, carrying with him the glass and metal plates, the laboratory vials, and the large-format cameras—but above all, everything he has absorbed from this process, repeated to the point of exhaustion: the extraordinary depth of detail, the sensitivity of the materials, the originality of the tones, and, above all, “the slow perception of a portrait, with microexpressions that may or may not be captured and a facial pattern that is not merely the idea of a moment.”
The collodion, a material that gradually erodes, helped the artist “build something,” to discover people who, in turn, help him discover himself. And one thing led to another. And Ivan, who had never wanted to leave an “incredible” sunset, realized he wanted to go out and that he also wanted to belong elsewhere. “The longing turned into a desire to stay away,” he says.
It all began with a “transformative” trip to India. “There’s such a stark contrast to everyday life that I start to see my own daily routine for the first time,” recalls the artist, who, little by little, has been trying to extend his stays abroad—authentic processes of self-discovery and the metamorphosis of his own experimental techniques. He spent two months in Chile (with his friend Carlos Trancoso) working on a shared vision of hope and shouting “No es sequía, es saqueo!”; he was in Cambodia absorbing construction techniques using local, raw materials; and, more recently, he found in Todos-os-Santos Bay, in Brazil, a safe haven and “a place in the world” to which he can return. “It’s the first time I’ve had a place I’ll be able to return to,” he smiles. “The idea of returning interests me.”
The image—the sculptural photograph—is undergoing a transformation. It, too, is changing: the grays of Porto and the monochrome of Europe fade away, giving way to saturated colors, the allure of the people, and the earth’s expressions. Ivan’s photography is like ghosts, presences of absences—a constant tension between the window that opens onto the world and the mirror that reflects the artist’s inner self.
