Daniel Blaufuks

Daniel BlaufuksLisboa ¶ 1963

 

	Créditos fotográficos / Photographic credits: Abílio Leitão

He studied photography at Lisbon's Ar.Co and London's Royal College of Art. He had his first exhibition at the Ether gallery in Lisbon in 1990, and has since been an important, constant presence on the Portuguese cultural scene. ¶ Blaukfus regards the practice of photography as a privileged pathway into intimacy and he structures his work in series, as if in a graphic diary, and introduces possible poetic readings of his images by suggesting a narrative line. By the introduction of a title, his photographs put on a communicational cover, the message of which the spectator arrives at intuitively (Collected Short Stories, CAM, 2003). And, much like one from French-speaking cinema traditions or the work of American independent filmmakers, all his motifs are relational. ¶ To be. To leave. To stay. To look at. To dream of. Photographs are as windows to the states of the soul, to everyday "small nothings". Everything is underlined by a lyrical notion of existence. A girl in sun glasses, raindrops on a pane, on a window of a plane or of a shop. Blaukfus's gaze becomes impregnated by an adolescent candour that reflects back at us a world in which each and every object is worthy of aesthetic redemption. ¶ The journey is a central theme to his work, a theme that circumscribes both his personal life and his family's memory, marked by the exile from Germany, a sense of errancy, as described by the author himself in Sob Céus Estranhos (Under Foreign Skies, 2002), a poetic view of his Jewish heritage. Most of his life was spent in New York - where he lived in several artists' residences, such as the International Studio Program or Location One - and Lisbon, but his travels to London, Tangier and Berlin also left significant markings. ¶ Looking at his life's oeuvre, it appears that Daniel Blaukfus's main vein expresses the idea that what is eminently personal is precisely what is eminently sharable. He was the BES Photo 2006 award winner.

 

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Ficha Técnica | Credits