Cultural Magazine El Sismógrafo
July 2004 - Donna L. Clovis
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ARTPOINTS.
DONNA CLOVIS. INTERACTIVE PHOTOGRAPHY. |
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| This
month we're invited to travel to Cuba for free. Donna Clovis, american
photographer, takes us with her through her photographies
of an unusual, intimate Cuba, showing us one face of Cuba, that can't be
seen during a touristic journey. We come to know with her a Habana that
is majestic but tired. We receive smells and noises, sounds of music far
away and it seems that we feel with her a deep nostalgy, when we have to
get back, with fear that maybe next time all will have dissappeared.
Enjoy
the journey an don't loose the opportunity to see this series of photographies
as ascertained as life itself. |
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Havana
is mysterious and sultry, decrepit, yet ravishingly beautiful. The island
has a classic Caribbean landscape of beaches and palm trees with old and
restored Spanish architecture. It is a culture that is African and Latin.
And intertwined with this beauty, are the laws imposed by one of the world’s
last Communist regimes.
Although Cuba still dances to the
tune composed by Karl Marx, it thrives with life and vitality. At night,
there is a hum all around –- the non-stop coffee and the samba that makes
the town feel like a vibrating African village dancing to Spanish guitars....
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| Donna
L. Clovis is a photojournalist who works in the medium of black-and-white,
infrared black-and-white, and color photography. Subjects of interest are
historic landscapes of place and culture throughout the world. Her current
series focuses on Cuba. Clovis arrived at her unique style through a journey
of news journalism, photographing documentary subjects, branching out into
the realms of fine art. Infrared photography allows Clovis to use the medium
to create dream-like images of historic placescapes and cultures. Photographs
of trains, native peoples, carnivals, bridges, the sea, and canals provide
some of her subject matter. The images have a timeless appeal to those
who view them, while subtly reminding us of the responsibility to preserve
the past, environmentally, visually and culturally, for future generations
to enjoy.
Clovis
has an extensive background as a photojournalist at ABC Television, WNET
and currently is the Director of Technology at New York University. She
has been a Fellow at Columbia University and Harvard University and was
nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for feature writing in 2000. She
is currently focusing on her fine art career, producing images that are
simultaneously arresting and provocative.
Critic:
When
we interpret the photographies of Donna Clovis, or better said, when we
totally open ourselves to them, it seems that we can feel a hint of provocation
of the misterious character of reality. We live with her a search of a
hidden identity, of the ephemerical in a fixed constellation. And she achieves
to show us in the middle of the monumental and undisturbable, a detail
of the flowing and passing time. Her photographies are at the same time
dramatically loaded and full of humor, what she does by sometimes gathering,
through the use of forms, the synthesis and the story both in one image. aGUILA cURATOR |
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The
works of Donna Clovis will be exhibited from the 1st to the 31st July in
the lecture cafe Parnaso, Carrer Passatge, Elche (next to the Parking Teatro).
More
information:
artpoints@artpointsonline.com
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