Betina Samaia: Azul

The backlight photos of Betina Samaia (b. 1964, São Paulo) attempt to point to shady world between what’s visible and what exists but can’t be apprehended by us. Her series of nocturne photographs exhibited at MIS comprehend around 20 images captured in different locations, such as Rio de Janeiro, Venice, Monument Valley, Bhutan, São Paulo, Burma, Atacama and New York City. Some of these works have been previously exhibited in Paris, as part of the fair La Quatrième Image, in 2014, and the series is reunited in the book “Azul”, published by Editora Madalena, released during the 2015’s edition of SP-Arte/Foto.

To create her nocturnes, the artists uses a flashlight to illuminate forms that wouldn’t ordinarily be visible to the eye. Through the use of long exposures for certain night scenes, Samaia achieves a situation where the city lights and the luminescence of stars are leveled. For the curator Eder Chiodetto, “the sidereal space, which, for the most part, only reveals itself through complex optical devices, appears in Betina’s  images creating a touching poetical tension, of rare beauty”.