Impressionism was an artistic movement that emerged in France during the second half of the 19th century. The movement’s name derives from the work “Impression, Sunrise” (1872), by Claude Monet, according to the dictionary of literary terms by Moisés Massaud (2002).
The myth of figurative representation in painting was dominant at the time. The Impressionists subverted this rule in order to represent better light and the movement of nature. Lucas Moutinho’s photographs seem a reflection on this issue. Like painting, photography also suffered from the obligation to represent truth and reality. The artist’s photographs transport our gaze to other places of artistic experience. There we can perceive colors, spots, lights, and contrasts and we may forget for a while the objective figure.
The photographer chose as subjects landscapes, the architecture of Brasília, and self-portraits. In these photographs, it is possible to observe several stages of abstraction, in which landscape seems to be a place where images almost completely disintegrate. The failure of the effort to represent reality goes far beyond photography. It is a constant reminder that what we see, in fact, is a beam of light that passes through our eyes, is interpreted by the brain, and constructs the impression of an image.
This process is mediated by the unconscious. In other words, other people may never see the image that we see. The myth of realistic representation in photography is yet another fable about the purpose of understanding reality, and Lucas Moutinho helps us to see beyond it.
