How do we approach the works of German Lorca, who, at the age of 93 and after 70 years of activity, still amazes us? The exhibition Travessias held at the Galeria Millan, in partnership with FASS, aims to approach this issue and some others. The exhibition presents twenty-seven photographs of the artist, produced from 1948 to 2014, who achieved seven decades of uninterrupted production.
It is known that Lorca is one of the major photographers among the “modern photographers of São Paulo”, all of them members of the Foto Cine Clube Bandeirantes, during the 1940s and the 1950s. The group knew how to suit to its works the vertiginous growth of São Paulo City in those days. The modern city required a new iconography that could represent it. Lorca, through his experimentation and modern instinct, found this new way and transformed the urban landscape into the living character of his images.
But the exhibition Travessias also proves that the language of German Lorca’s photography transcends the so-called modern photography repertoire; there is an evolution. At the very beginning are renowned photographs such as “Malandragem” (1949) and “Troncos cruzados” (1955).
In the 1960s, his photography shows a formal and graphical research. These images arouse some amazement, as, for instance, Folhagens”, the window “Mondrian” and “Andaime”, all of them from the 1960s. Or even “Aeroporto (1961 and 1965) in which the vagueness and some silhouettes seem to be in motion.
In the series of photographs made in New York, during three different travels (1967, 1978 and 1982), the city does not show up in its magnitude; It is a set of close-ups, composing a patchwork of mirrors, shop fronts and frontages.
The time brought to German Lorca’s photography some cleanness, a power of synthesis, as shown in “Circulo quadrado” (2007).
In his most recent series, made in 2014, the main issue is the composition of the image and the search for the essence of the shape, with lights and shadows effects created by the sun at different times of night and day.
The exhibition Travessias presents the work of German Lucas not just as part of the history of Brazilian modern photography, but also as the development of a visual language, coherent and original, which started at the end of the 1940s and reached the 2nd decade of the 21st century.