Lombroso’s Link to Love
After receiving an assignment from Kodak Dorit Lombroso took the chance of recreating the Masters and fossilized a moment like no other photographer. Carefully she evaluates her cultural reverence with Chispa Magazine’s editor-in-chief.
Q: How do you define the word art?
A: Like most big questions, the answer is culturally dependent and varies. Clive Bell affirms there must be one common thread tying all art works. What quality is common to a Mexican sculpture, a Persian bowl, Chinese carpets, Giotto frescoes at Padua, and the masterpieces of Poussin, Piero della Francesca, and Cezanne? “Only one answer seems possible—significant form. In each, lines and colors combined in a particular way, certain forms and relations of forms, stirs our aesthetic emotions.” If I may dare, I feel that one needs something beyond intelligence and artistic knowledge; to be an artist one needs special sensations. One must be born an artist with feelings from the heart. It is like love that is often instantaneous and almost always blind.
Q: What is your goal behind the visions that you portray through your form of art?
A: My style is meant to evoke nostalgia. I love the organic, the ethnic, and the raw forms. There are flowers and leaves everywhere, and my light is a kind of airy amber, which caresses the forms and objects. I don’t wish to compromise the urgent or the timely with the accidental or the candid. I prefer a staged world. In recreating the Masters, I interpret their work in my vision. I draw on the rules of painting, constructing the picture for the camera with the original source in mind. The tools used to achieve it are: composition, subject matter, lighting, texture, and film selection. By introducing grain film, I achieve a pointillist quality; I use it as a filter to cut out surplus information recorded by the camera. The grain lessens the clarity and creates harmony. I was assigned campaigns to bring the dream of the Masters into the realm of photography and contemporary commercial needs. For the Tahiti Board of Tourism, I photographed a campaign according to Gauguin. For the Mexico Board of Tourism, I was inspired by the images of Frida Kahlo and Diego Riviera; for Victoria’s Secret it was Rousseau, and for Caesars Palace it was Alma Tadema. My destination photography takes form by creating images in the spirit of the countries’ Masters. In doing so, I connect the viewer to the art and culture in a familiar, immediate sense. In a pictorial language, I try to convey art as a close link to people. I execute the production while emulating the painters without care for imitation. In my travel and portraiture work, I attempt to be true to the paintings. My dream-like images and sensory representation of femininity are free from time and place.
For more of the interview with Dorit Lombroso, and to view her portfolio, order your copy of the August/September issue here.
Mavian Arocha-Rowe
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