The Italian photographer, based in Paris, takes us on her peregrinations to the heart of the jungle in Paranapiacaba, Brazil, where dreams and reality, texture and contrast, sensitivity and poetry intertwine.
Costanza Gastaldi’s portfolio leads us on a journey from landscapes to atmospheres, histories to mysteries. This former Gobelins graduate and Master of Arts and Letters from the Sorbonne has managed to make a name for herself on the photography scene in just five years.
Her works are a fusion of tradition and innovation. The artist, who celebrates her thirtieth birthday this year, is an avid proponent of photogravure, a nineteenth century technique. This printing process, whereby an image is produced using a copper plate, which is grained by light, reproduces highly delicate photographs with particular depth. Its execution requires exceptional, and rather rare, know-how. “I particularly like it because it showcases craftsmanship, which is often forgotten in photography,” she explains. Some images I recolour by hand, spending an average of 25 hours on each of them with watercolour. I place great importance on the materiality, such as rare papers, to convey the concept of each series.” This process is extremely costly. Choosing this path is a real proof of commitment by the artist, who must enlist multiple resources.
Between oneirism and realism
The depth of Costanza Gastaldi’s expertise enables her to mix oneirism and realism in a single image. Capturing the beauty, strangeness and mystery of lush, mountainous, hilly or icy environments. Her series’ The Loto Nero, Loto Nero Color Rebirth, Géographie sentimentale and Combien d’hiver as-tu ? are an interaction between photography, painting and landscape. Her mist-shrouded views filtering in unearthly light transform the present into an enigmatic future. “There is always a tension in the different shots of my images that invites the viewer to continue their narrative discourse.” Her expeditions prove to be powerful testimonies, where dream and reality come face to face, taking us “into the Chinese mountains, above the Arctic Circle or into the White Desert”.
It’s no wonder that this Edgar Allen Poe of photography is attracting attention in the profession, in between the exhibitions, awards and galleries showcasing her work. In 2023, she won an artistic residency in Brazil, initiated by Photo Days as part of the 2022 Portfolio Lectures. It was a collaboration with the Collective Iandé and the Festival Foto Paranapiacaba, which addresses the social and environmental issues of this forgotten region of Latin America.
So Costanza Gastaldi roamed the rainforest of Paranapiacaba. This small village, located about forty kilometres from São Paulo, dedicated to coffee-growing and railway activity, is bursting with stories, legends and mysteries.
Through her series Oro Negro – the name given to coffee during the colonial era – her perceptive wanderings are transformed into a journey through time, into the heart of the nineteenth century. At the first exhibition of this work in November, as part of Photo Days, the images will use pigment printing. And not just any, but piezography, which specialises in black and white prints. “This printing technique uses eight inks, composed of charcoal pigments, to give a velvety finish, which brings the mist to life,” she says. “Producing a series of photogravure images takes a very long time, so I am reserving that technique for a more distant exhibition, during the Year of Brazil in Paris, in 2025.”
On the edge of the Brazilian jungle
Her approach to photography blends wonderfully with the pictorial quality of the wild, silent and infinite space. The result is something almost hypnotic. “I always interpret landscapes in a sentimental, emotional way, rather than physically and geographically. This place is fascinating, it is the last small village before the jungle. It was here that the English colonists decided to run the railway line through to transport coffee, clay and iron to the capital cities.”
Her work demonstrates a sensitive approach to the medium, between the classicism of her practice and the modernity of her outlook. “I remember the image I captured at 4.30am with this golden light falling on the ruins of an old hospital. This customary mist is the source of many a legend. Two others also show this haze that invades the village, caused by vapour from the Atlantic Ocean currents. My choice of non-colour gives this eerie appearance, poised between light and a shadow theatre effect.”
Costanza Gastaldi will present a solo show in Hong Kong from her series Erosiva, exploring disease, and an immersive exhibition at Art Genève in January 2024, in collaboration with a deep techno DJ. On the theme of jellyfish, she will present images based on the sounds he has reproduced from nature.
