SKIN BLACK

The series BLACK SKIN derives from my student days, when attending workshops live model, atenta à anatomia, the body movements and lighting. The human body, my gateway to paint,
eventually lead me to photography.
Maureen Bisilliat

Black skin is the first work that Maureen went public. In it photographed a black girl, “a woman proud, not considered derogatory pose as model”, in his own words.

Otrabalho resulted in an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo, in 1966, and already anticipated much of his personal imagery, and, somehow, also other important photographers would follow years later this same strand. In an interview with writer Marta Goes, psychologist Eda Tassara, working partner and friend of the photographer, says “then, photographing a black model was an innovation”. It was a time of strong intellectual debate, exposed by Cinema Novo and the Arena Theatre. “Maureen brought this debate to the territory of aesthetics and beauty sensually said of the popular ", afirma Tassara.

"Ocorpo human, my gateway to paint, I ended up taking the photograph”, Maureen Avaliani. Along with the images of the model, the test also portrays a black boy (in some images, as a "boy-angel" with white wings) posing alone or with an elderly and / or model-. Ex-votos are also part of the test, interacting with the characters and their bodies, a delicate script bathed in a light masterful. The photographs were taken in São Paulo, in São José do Rio Pardo, e na Capital.

The photographic essays of Maureen have always been designed and edited on strong visual sequences that summarize the author's vision on the universes of the real and imaginary, writing what she calls the photographic equivalents of literary works that guided his work. In the case of skin series Black, Maureen still currently working on this project, now in reverse, looking, from the images of the test, authors of texts that communicate with this inaugural series of her photographic work.

In the words of Maureen: "I appreciate images coupled with written, chosen phrases defining melodic line orchestration. In books such as Diane Arbus (1923-1971) In Goldin and (1953) no such orchestration: rhythms, silences, chords, Empty. The word, choice of literary or pinched witness biographical, comes close person's speech, distilled. It would be almost like writing with the picture and see the word. "

Sergio Burgi
Curator
Instituto Moreira Salles