CANA-DE-AÇÚCAR

Photos in Motion or The Wisdom of the pictures

(Paula Pires, translated by Henrique Fontes)

As if it were the ocean, the green Sugar-cane  plantation waves up until you loose sight on the skyline. Green ocean of smooth looking grass hiding the hard defensive lanceshapped and imponent leaves. Its sweet fruit made the place rich. Throughout the centuries, the sugar extracted from the “Green gold” has been weaving part of our culture’s memory’s web.

On this setting, to look upon the human figure – a blurred dot in such huge plantation – and notice its sense – simbolic landmark on the timeline – requires art.

Ah, the art of  seeing! From the transgressor´s eye, which passes by the focus and denudes the static appeareance. The art of photographing life.

The lenses registrate everything through the observor´s eyes. Revealing the past of the future, today, the present. Afterall, the photographical clic is far from being extinct. The image shows a plural moment that carries on itself an entire story. Similar to a multiple-meaning code, the picture sinthetizes several infomations.

The landscape. Colloured by the sugar-cane-green, definetely incorporated the imaginary Man, and , yet, the real man. The image of the worker who walks through the long road in the midst of the canebrake, simulacrum of time, can be the arch that separates us from forgetness; it allows us to forsee surreal landscapes, even when reality is misery and ruins.

When the first sugar mill was opened in the Northeast of Brazil, “Nossa Senhora da Ajuda” (Mother help) was invited in to garantee the success of the investment and to protect the labour from such suffering souls. Those were hard times; it was the year of 1535. God, the one and all, hearing the prayers whispered in many different languages, words and intentions, permitted mother help to bless the investment and soon it was spread throughout the region. Thus, the wealth of sugar was made, and through the cicles of centuries, it achieved its place in the brazilian culture.

•••

A Northern Folk Legend

They say that one day Jesus Christ was walking through a road on a hot sunny day, starving and very thirsty. In the middle of the road he saw a sugarcane plantation and decided to sit at the shade, refreshing himself chewing sugarcane cubes and, at last, ending his hunger. After getting satisfied he blessed the sugarcanes, promising that Man would have good and sweet food from them. On the next day, at the same time, the devil left hell with his horns and tale on fire. Galloping through the same road, he ended up at the same plantation. At the time, though, the sugarcane released its “Fur” and the juice was bitter and burned the devil´s throat. He got furious and promised that from the sugarcane Man would extract a drink as hot as the boilers from hell.

That´s why, from sugarcane, one can take the sugar, blessed by God, and “Cachaça”, cursed by the devil.

•••

The ambivalence of blessings and curses is long forgotten, from the times where popular beliefs were as common as the hot air of the cane plantation. New products joined the sugar and Cachaça, always responding to Man´s desires and needs. Nowadays the mechanization of the fields followed the rhythm of industrialization. The marks left by the harvesting shows the printings of the wheels of modern times, which now covers the footprints of Man. Nevertheless, at the same place, facing a new reality, we can see funny looking machines blended to the landscape of never-dying traditions from a distant past; the practical wisdom of the ancients, along with the technological culture developed by the industry. Tradition living side by side with innovation. At the modern trades of globalization – upgraded version of old market deals? – Brazilian sugar wins over any other market in the world. The time wheels spins around and, as it’s been for centuries, the wealth of sugar becomes one of Brazil greatest values.

Archive of any information, photography is the particular vehicle which maintains the register of remembrance and the move of not-forgetting, without compromising the look and the will to see – to know how to see with the heart. Times have changed, Men have changed. Only the green sugarcane keeps waving untiringly at the wind. The pictures, silently, tell the story.