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Artist Pierre Dumont is considered one of Alexander von Humboldt’s many heirs; just like the German naturalist, he has devoted his life to attending to know the individuals, cultural traditions, and varied ecosystems of Venezuela, the place he has lived for greater than thirty-five years. His latest pictures survey the dense vegetation, waterways, seashores, and ruins of the nation’s oldest nationwide park, Henri Pittier Nationwide Park. Eschewing the conventions of documentary pictures, Dumont’s compositions conjure the late-eighteenth-century aesthetic of the picturesque, which sought a stability between classical magnificence and the elegant.
The title of this exhibition, “Agua Fuerte” (Robust Water), nods to the abundance of water within the Caribbean cloud forest whereas paying homage to Jesuit priest Ignacio Castillo, whose social platform Aguafuerte was based in 1982 in an deserted hydroelectric plant contained in the park. Water serves as the fabric foundation for Dumont’s photographic experiments, which embody do-it-yourself emulsion mixtures and methods for movie growth, firming, and bleaching. Although he does sometimes draw on digital know-how, the photographer constructions his work as an exploration of classic processes in resistance to the immediacy of latest picture manufacturing and consumption. To create the blues within the large-format cyanotypes of endemic ferns dominating the partitions, Dumont tailored the unique formulation invented by John Herschel, who pioneered the medium within the 1840s. For a sequence of depictions of man surrounded by nature, the artist used a pinhole digicam, then printed the photographs in refined platinum palladiums—a way that dates from 1870. Two small panorama pictures are the one photos to interrupt from the monochrome shade scheme, an impact achieved by way of a nonmetallic course of involving gum bichromate. Moderately than inviting nostalgia, Dumont’s multilayered historic references remind us of the fragility of our current.
— Silvia Benedetti
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