Fluvial
Fluvial is a meditation of the beaches and villages of interior northern and central Portugal. Photographed between 2011 and 2017, these fluvial scenes transmute personal geography into a fictional atmosphere. Testifying to the author’s lifelong relationship with northern and central Portuguese riverside beaches and villages, they act not in the manner of a topographic survey, but rather by equating erosion with vision. Just as the river currents have shaped the natural elements, time’s passage appears to have depurated irony off his gaze, predisposing it to form and analogy, and to kindness towards his equals.
Capturing families at informal moments of Portuguese society, predominantly emigrant workers home for summer from northern European countries, bodies, tree trunks and riverbed rocks are made to resemble small sculptures (some of which anthropomorphic); the human body, here almost amphibious, is often reduced to the simple form, to the submerged surface, either adopting the stream bed as an optical instrument, or by shaping it with light.
The human and non-human bodies emerge from chiaroscuro schemes, either as elements of an illusory mise-en-scène, or defamiliarized, reduced to mere form, as if by casting a spell on them.
Realistic yet dreamlike, conveying a pagan sense of nature, creating the atmospheric effect of an infinite Sunday, it reminds one of a summer dream —a visual ode to human leisure.
BIO
Tito Mouraz, 1977, Portugal.
He finished the Visual Arts and Photography course in the Superior Art School of Oporto (Escola Superior Artística do Porto) in 2010, being this the city where he lives and works currently. Exhibits regularly since 2009 in Portugal and abroad. Some of the most significant exhibitions have taken place at Módulo Gallery (Lisbon); Format International Photography Festival (UK); Blanca Berlin Gallery (Spain); Tampere Art Museum (Finland); Museu da Imagem (Portugal); Fotofestiwal Lodz (Poland); Festival Circulation(s), Paris (France); Carpe Diem Arte e Pesquisa (Lisbon) Encontros da Imagem, Braga (Portugal); Voies Off Gallery, Arles (France) etc.
Winner in 2013 of The Emergentes DST International Photography Award and the Portfolio Review Award, Carpe Diem Arte e Pesquisa.
In Portugal he is represented by Módulo – Centro Difusor de Arte (Lisbon) and in France by Voies Off Gallery (Arles). His work is present in the BES Art public collection and in some private collections.