At the end of the Photoquai Biennale, the jury selects a photographer to be in residence. In 2011, the Brazilian photographer João CastilhoVade Retro with a photographic essay that reflects on the supernatural, evil and death. “Photography, which is almost always related to what can be seen, in this case reveals the invisible and hidden layers of human experience.

” This work is framed by two previous series, the spontaneous Redemunho (2005), and the landscape interventions of Linhas (2008). “Vade Retro is a photographic essay on the relationship – neither palpable nor immediate – of man with a world where what we see is not always real. The series presents a spectral, ancestral world constructed of apparitions, and transformations. This is an essay on the transient, the incomplete, the hybrid. And – why not? – also a work on the inevitable failure inherent to every human life.” But it is also, indirectly, a reflection on our times. Giorgio Agamben defined as contemporary one who examines the present, “in order to distinguish not the light but the darkness.” These are indeed dark times, like the majority of these large prints (60x90cm and 110x165cm) of this series limited to 5 copies and printed using a black-and-white Piezo inkjet printer.

On Monday, November 26, 2012, Castilho donated ten prints to the collections of the Musée du Quai Branly, organizer of Photoquai and its residency program.

Bernard Perrine