O Seu caminho: site-specific: Claudia Jaguaribe

Diluted Nature: A Game of Perception

Imagining paths is like dreaming—an act that is discontinuous, ambiguous, and illusory. When we construct landscapes, we often think of them as desirable territories. However, the image we create differs from how nature presents itself to us. To think through images is to sketch the shape of an intermediate time and space, existing in the gap of suggestion, within imaginary narratives through which we grasp the subjectivity of places.

In the series O Seu Caminho by Claudia Jaguaribe, uncertainty serves as the vanishing point. Flow, instability, imminence, transition, displacement. The gaze upon nature reveals an immense volume of water, yet water—as a photographic subject—is neither naive nor peaceful in its essence. The nature represented by Claudia Jaguaribe functions as both statement and sign. These landscapes, while beautiful, disrupt the idealized notion of nature and its photogenic plasticity. The entanglements in O Seu Caminho give shape to alternative meanings, confronting ideas we might not dare to consider: the denial of time’s flow, captured within a mechanism of simultaneity and unfolding images.

The soft tones and tactile layers of water created by Claudia evoke a sense of ambiguity. They are not entirely serene. Each photograph unveils a delicate stitching of possibilities, as if it were captured in a fictional travel album. The narrative breathes through the memories of places once visited by people who left traces of their passage within the images. These visual archives are then reconstructed by the photographer, leading us to perceive fragments and overlaps. The technical processes used in these compositions establish delicate connections and interactions. The images within this series have drifted from their singularity to become wanderers, gathered and arranged to give meaning to one another. The concept of a path becomes entangled with a time that appears to lack a clear beginning, middle, or end, deliberately subverted by Claudia Jaguaribe to evoke sensations and interpretations. Here, photography is not merely the end product but rather a medium for poetic exploration.

By intervening, grouping, adjusting colors, introducing subtle forms, and emphasizing textures, these photographs reinterpret the concept of nature not from an ecological perspective, but rather from an intimate and reflective stance—one that embodies the photographer’s personal engagement with the theme. The philosopher Henri Bergson once asked:

"How do we move from internal time to the time of things? We perceive the material world, and this perception seems, rightly or wrongly, to be simultaneously within us and outside of us: on the one hand, it is a state of consciousness; on the other, it is a superficial layer of matter (...)."

In a way, we experience these multiple times in O Seu Caminho.

Claudia Jaguaribe once said that she saw little purpose in merely recording an element that had existed in that form long before her presence. “I truly seek to recreate the object, like a small sculpture emerging from my hands.” She made this reflection about her commercial work in 1991. Years later, Claudia continues to manipulate reality as a means of constructing meaning, moving beyond mere documentation and approaching narrative construction. In O Seu Caminho, she follows this same principle, exploring a different nature and photographic temporality, without exhausting the paths of our perception.

Georgia Quintas