Native Mirror: shared images of Tremembé people

Abstract

Between 2005 and 2008, I realized a photo essay with the Tremembé Indians, a native people of Brazil's northern coast. Certain images in black & white negative manually revealed with slow exposure and without flash, registration of "Torém" ritual in 2005 came to more contemporary art than the traditional documentary. Instead of publication or exposure, the films were digitized and the work yielded a video installation in an art museum, a monograph in anthropology and a documentary film. This photo essay done little over ten years ago in the Indian village Tremembé of Almofala, west coast of the state of Ceará, presents here a series composed of eight photographs that was just saved by his aesthetic that derives from the documentary and points to the art contemporary.

In Tremembé I worked between 2004 and 2010, where I grew photographer, ethnographer and documentary filmmaker, and tried to learn from them something about the sea, the winds and "enchanted" spirits. And cooking. They were my teachers. By digging a collection of more than 2000 pictures and videos, choosing to present on this occasion the first series of photographs "Torém", recorded in 2005, the reflection follows the flow of intuition and memory, as arts of engagement in life. If in the first plan the work brings aesthetics, in the background, emerges the politics; or vice versa, according to Benjamin and Rancière.

The photo shoot with Tremembé yielded about 2,000 photos in black & white and color chrome film support, in three years of visits, experiences and accompaniments in the community. The approach of the issues and how to perform them were patterns of conversations with leaders, youth and senior members of the Tremembé communities, constituting a process of "shared anthropology" (Rouch 1973). This ethnographic experience, could emerge a shared field of knowledge and, from this, photographic representations (and audiovisuals, at another time) possible from Tremembé universe. In this dialogic interaction between communities and researcher are elected some key points for the imagistic approach. Among them: territorial relationship and ethnic boundaries, Torem ritual, sea and fishing culture, children, buildings, women, leaders etc.

Finally, Native Mirror project was as a whole and dense shared visual anthropology process with Tremembé people, which came from a researcher-community interaction to launch the perspective of he Indians from building their own images in reflection on issues such as image, imagery and stereotype about native indigenous in Brazil. The shared experience of photographic record gave rise to a longer and complex process, with the co-development of a movie script, made from DOCTV IV Brazil Award (Espelho Nativo, doc, 2009, 52') and also performing a monograph in Social Sciences, held at the Federal University of Ceará. The series of photographs selected here represent the first major research and immersion experience, especially in Torem ritual, so that it presents, therefore, the seed that generated fruits, branches and trunks later.

Credits:

Author: Philipi Bandeira

Photographs: Philipi Bandeira

Direction, image editing and text:Philipi Bandeira