Artist’s vision

This work is aesthetic and spiritual. It’s about my relation with God the Father and his son Jesus, to whom I dedicate this work. In it, I express my way to see the beauty of the light over matter, either water, body and earth. I believe light is the foundation of existence, because, without it, there’s no
life, and consequently, no light.

In these photographs, light is the main protagonist, revealing the human body that represents the soul as one of the main elements of the photographic composition, which joins to the main character of the history, the light.

I see life being orchestrated by light, and we need it for the music to be in the propper tones for the song to be played. God is the light of the world and we inhabit in it, His presence is necessary for us to live together now and in the future.

If there’s beauty on Earth, it’s due the light that makes us see His greatness and magnitude. In the beginning, the Earth was shapeless and empty, but God commanded: LET THERE BE LIGHT, AND THERE WAS LIGHT.

With this artwork, I wish the spectator to watch how the light moves in different ways in front of different materials and how spiritual lightning is in front of our eyes.

Biography

Renan Benedito (Salvador, Bahia, 1997) is a photographer, director and mentor. Having his first contact with photography at 15 years old, today he’s represented by the galleries Paulo Darzé and Casa Rosa Amarela. Renan already stacks  participation in exhibitions such as at MAM-BA, SP-Arte, SP-Foto, Palacete das Artes and Bahia Justice Tribunal. In 2020, Renan was the winner of Concurso Singular Plural contest. In the publicity, he directed and photographed for enterprises such as NPR, ELLE, Facebook, Renner, Mrv and Itaú, in particular the campaign “Leia para uma criança” and the movie “FUTURO”, 2020, for the project ELLE Stories, an ELLE Brasil project.

In his photographs, specially “Infância Periférica” and “SimplesImenso” series (both from 2019, of which predominates the photographic craft with mineral pigment on cotton paper), Renan’s gaze turns to the childhood of the human being. More than the main characters, these children represent the emotional element that supports all the initiative promoted by the artist. Portrayed with the typical spontaneity of children, in daily life situations, the simplicity of photographs keep not only the technical dominion and Renan’s sensibility, such as layers of reading filled with innocence, happiness, friendship, strength and hope.

By the way, “hope” is a word constantly used by the artist to present and define these works. Strengthening the self esteem of the people presented, Renan begins to help construct, in the present, a chain of dreams. Like the waters in his photographs, each child, now still a drop, transforms into a beautiful promise of ocean.

Retina da Alma
Texto: João Farkas

There’s no limit to the different
feelings music can awaken. And
some of these feelings are so special,
so deep they can’t be even translated
into words.
L. Bernstein

What fascinates me about photography, such as in art in general, is the competence to elevate, to touch the sublime, the unspeakable. The magic vocation to transcendence, territory where the co-moving lives. The deepest human dimension, essential, subtle.

Child of the light (this wave-particle chameleon), the photography, an art/technique objective-subjective lives simultaneously the dominions of physics and metaphysics. What is there as a subject and what is here as imagined.

When it’s not easily deciphered, consumed, forgotten; when it bothers us, when it uses our imagination, interrogates us and forces us to run through the deepest layers, beyond sensibility or reason, it justifies itself: transports us, transforms us.

The photography, for Cortázar, is the scale of the gaze.

Certainly the artistic gesture needs to integrate, to circulate and to be accepted to survive. But this is the danger of which we must run away. Hence the tension between originality, the path of subjective creativity, and obviously, the formula, the digestible, what is expected.

When Renan went beyond what made us know him: the immediate poetic of the macro-series “Elas Ainda Brincam”, he abandoned a safe territory of acceptance and impact.

When chasing light and dream, when diving literally in new layers, he takes risks. And we can travel with him on the path of his retines and his soul.