Amaury da Cunha
Saccades
www.amaurydacunha.com
‘Often, when I photograph, I behave like him (a burglar) – someone who steals things. I have to go unnoticed: I’m hungry, I feed on the most insignificant objects, often completely worthless, I slip amongst the people, I caress them and cut them up into pieces, and then gather up the bits. I go through shop windows, but in spite of everything I’ve taken, I get the feeling I’m as poor as I was when I began… Fragmentary writing is a rip torn from life in chaotic sentences. This accumulation of bits of meaning, placed one after the other, isn’t satisfying for anyone trying, in spite of everything, to feel more at ease in the world.’
Amaury Da Cunha, from the book Saccades, Yellow Now, 2009
Da Cunha is interested in objects in the broadest sense of the word. For these objects to talk about themselves, the photographer has to take them out of their everyday surroundings. Only in this way do they recover their possibilities for self-expression. Furthermore, to avoid the predetermined image, the artist sneaks up on his subjects unseen, from behind, and he takes only a fragment of them. In this way, he shows their vulnerability and, all of a sudden, he puts them into the forefront of the scene – a place that was never intended for them. Da Cunha wants to talk about the essential fragility of the world through these decontextualised fragments.
