Sunyata. 2016
Appropriates the concept of emptiness to think a shooting mode by errancy, establishing relations between photography and the world. Like the act of plunging into a sea of uncertainty, the Sunyata photobook is an experience of emptiness bumping into issues such as impermanence, interdependence, besides the flow of forms, sensations and perceptions, where the “I” is only an artificial unity created by the mind. Sunyata (Sanskrit) is often translated as empty or, more precisely, emptiness. Emptiness is a characteristic of the phenomena: nothing has an independent existence, an essential identity. Everything integrated in life undresses an absolute identity, and is impermanent, interrelated and interdependent, so that nothing is totally self-sufficient or detached from the whole. All things are in a dynamic state of constant flux. What is emptiness but an infinite potency?
Barbat. 2018
Welcome to Uruguay! Barbat recalls the last vacation I took with my parents. We spent four days in Uruguay – the promised land to some Brazilians – and there we had some sort of frustrated vacation, like National Lampoon’s Vacation starring Chevy Chase in the 1980s. Instead of that green wagon from the Grisworld family we boarded the Barbat, a imposing and standard tourist bus, which will guide us on this journey through the obvious veins of the city and of time.
On your right we can see an absurd amount of photos doomed to digital forgetfulness, while later we can go down to some more pictures and a quick snack. Due to divergences of tourist styles, I decided to register the peculiar form of trip adopted by my parents and to translate the experiences and emotions that we experienced. In a cycle; get on the bus, get off at the tourist spot, take pictures to not forget, jump back into the bus and resume until your last and exhausting stop.
Barbat is a narrative about the production, accumulation and burial of images generated by the tourist in format of trip guide. Jump in Barbat and let’s discover Uruguay!
Note: The text above was written by the Artist. No modification was made by C.O.C.A.
Rafael Roncato (Indaiatuba, SP, Brazil, 1989) is a photographer and visual artist who lives and works in São Paulo. Focusing his research on photography, editorial production and video, investigates the connections and transformations present in his experiences, such as sensations, flows and forms, through narratives between reality and fiction. Adágio, a nude of the transgender cartoonist Laerte Coutinho, participated in individual and collective shows, integrates the first original Netflix Brazilian documentary, Laerte-se, and is part of Schwules Museum’s Collection. In 2016, he published his first photobook about emptiness, Sunyata, a result of his post-graduation at FAAP that won artist's book prize of the 5th Latin American Autumn Fair and finalist of Verzasca Foto Festival 2018.