The artistic research of Danny Bittencourt, investigates the sharing of the sensitive as a practice, appropriating photography as a tool for personal expression and the construction of meaningsan article written by Carmen Line Hust
ARTICULATE #28 | JULY 2021 Danny Bittencourt (b. 1987) is a Brazilian visual poet who circulates between artistic production, education and book writing. Graduated in Photography, specialist in Visual Poetics and Master in Education, she is dedicated to sharing her research and experience through lectures, workshops and courses, which have already been seen in several states in Brazil and Argentina. She was the founder of the School of Artistic Photography, in Porto Alegre, a school aiming to expand the notion of photography and establish reflections and dialogues with other artistic fields. She is the author of the book "Fotografia Fine Art" by iPhoto Editora, "Fotografia Híbrida”, "A luz da Janela" and “(des) Construindo a Fotografia Fine Art” published by Chiado Books. She currently dedicates to online teaching, through courses available on her website, Domestika Plataform, Nucleo Academy and Portuguese Institute of Photography.
Her artistic research investigates the sharing of the sensitive as a practice, appropriating photography as a tool for personal expression and the construction of meanings
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The preferred media of Bittencourt is digital photography, due to its rapid process relieving her from anxiety. In recent years, she’s been exploring hybrid photography, bringing the experience to a manual level, giving her a much greater depth of narrative construction and imagery meaning.
The work of Bittencourt is initiated from a completely emotional urge. An impulse she cannot control, since she creates from what overflows. Once she identifies the feeling, the creative process becomes controlling and urgent. To Bittencourt, the motif of creation is always emotional and sometimes psychological, working with her battle against anxiety in her images. The images of Bittencourt speak of her relationship with the world and with herself. Some of her work addresses the pain of distance from the love of her life. In this work, Bittencourt buried images, froze and tried to materialize her pain in the printed image. Other works speak of the 6 years she was waiting in line to adopt her daughter. Her more recent work addresses the struggle for space within her, aiming to reinforce her own existence, lost in adverse conditions of endless transitions, motherhood and an almost nomadic life. |
Due to the difficulty of materializing the sensitive, Bittencourt do not believe that there are any key elements in creating a good composition. She believes that the first step is to identify the sensitive and then look for visual resources that better build the narrative and even find a good visual strategy that embraces all the complexities of feeling. This process takes time and with a broad visual repertoire, her narratives and compositions become non-linear and exquisite.
Bittencourt is visually inspired by the Dutch baroque painter Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675), but also she’s inspired in color and natural lighting by the Italian painter Caravaggio (1571-1610) and the Dutch painter Rembrandt (1606-1669). In contemporary photography Bittencourt is drawn to the subjectivities of Irish artist Deborah Sheedy (b. 1959) and French artist Laurence Demaison (b. 1965). Lately, Bittencourt is inspired by illustrations, stains and incompleteness. For this study she’s drawn towards the work with charcoal by the American artist Robert Kelley (b. 1956).
This article about Danny Bittencourt takes part of the 28th magazine, ARTICULATE #28. Read, download or order your print version of the full publication below.
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