TITLE : LIQUID CITIES
SERIES
AUTHOR : GUSTAVO MINAS
Gustavo Minas is today a clear worldwide reference in street photography and beyond. The main reason is that he has been able, over the years, to find a unique personal style that sets him apart from everyone else. I find this new series extraordinary, a solid work that has personally increased my desire to go out into the streets and take photographs because it has made it clear to me that, despite the immeasurable amount of photographic production nowadays, if things are thought out and executed well, they continue to stand out and inspire.
Zygmunt Baumann’s definition of “Liquid Modernity” makes clear to us the transience of cities and the transformations in human relations that occur from it. Baumann analyzes the effects of globalization and modification of social and political relations after the end of World War II; the violence of actions that extinguished stability, social and political balance, and, finally, postmodernism characterized by technologies. Therefore, the accelerated dissemination of the media and unbridled use of technologies, in his analysis, was just one process of expansion towards the instability and fragmentation of seeing and being, of time and space. In the visual arts and the specific case of photography, the image has accompanied this change, enabling us to comprehend with greater depth these concepts related to contemporaneity. Gustavo Minas has presented us, with this type of image, the daily life lived in the great contemporary centers. Gustavo registers the symbolic space, creating visual relationships in intervals of space and fluid, liquid times. In his photos, he points out what Baumann highlights in his books as transitory relationships. Places that are built to guarantee, in the name of fear, security, isolation, and dehumanization in social and cultural relations; this transience that applies to urbanized landscapes in all major metropolises. The photo locations are often places of passage, or non-places, built to reinforce, in the name of fear and security, isolation, alienation, and dehumanization in social and cultural relations. The images show that the contemporary city does not have a single, linear landscape configuration and this plurality is further accentuated by the ubiquitous speed of technology.
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