From optometry to photography

He graduated as an optometrist, but his passion for image and photography led him to study, first, a professional course at the Portuguese Institute of Photography (IPF) and, later, a Master's Degree in Image Design at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Porto. Perhaps because his parents had a video club, ‘he's always had a relationship with the image’, and he says that when he was studying Science, he felt ‘the need to experiment, to provoke new sensations and think about new possibilities’.

At the IPF, ‘one of the first good feelings’ was when she was asked to go out and take a photograph. ‘I didn't have to make an account, it's not studying; I mean, it's studying in a different way, it's the creative side,’ he describes. And he argues that what attracts him to photography is the possibility of ‘a translation’: "you look at something and invite other people to look at that same element. There's this thoughtful direction of the gaze; it's what we feel, but it's also an invitation for other people to look at that portion, which marks the frame of the image."

As an artist, Ivan has focused a lot on analogue photography, saying that initially it was ‘an exploration of the aesthetics and the process itself’ that interested him. "The possibility of hacking, distorting and manipulating a process in the digital universe, where systems are practically closed, can sometimes become complex, at least from my approach, but all analogue or chemical systems are systems that give clues to their flaws. And their flaws are also an artistic element in themselves and of interest per se," he emphasises.

Wet collodion: the 19th-century polaroid

Using this 19th century technique, Ivan has developed his own artistic work, but also a more commercial dimension, with portrait sessions. In this process, he says, he is attracted by the aesthetics and plasticity of the images. "The first time I produced wet collodion, I worked without a camera, I worked with chemical manipulation, chemigrams. There was this idea of revealing the process, what is hidden, the images that the process itself hides," he says.

‘Instead of thinking of a projected image, we think of the images that are within the chemistry of the process itself, and which are not normally revealed, or are glimpses that we get during the development process.’ And he gives an example: "How is it that wet collodion, which has sepia tones, has blue, golden tones? And I wanted to reveal these intermediate stages of the process, as well as other characteristics, such as the negative, that matrix which then gives rise to an image, but which is also itself an image." 

As well as the artisanal side and being able to manipulate the process, he likes the possibility of presenting ‘a physical object more quickly in wet collodion than with digital processes’. Ivan says that wet collodion is also ‘an instant photography process, a kind of old Polaroid’, because the image is ready in 20 minutes, from capture to final product. ‘We get the image finished and printed on the spot.’ This process can be applied to various surfaces, namely glass, aluminium and iron, with different designations - ambrotype, aluminotype and ferrotype, respectively.

Agenda Porto followed a demonstration session of wet collodion photography in which the artist reveals all the steps, and which you can watch here. The next session, entitled ‘The Chemistry of a Portrait’, is scheduled for 15th February at the Túnel and registration is now open.

Imagens Verdes: art and community

Ivan says that, in his artistic work, ‘he has invested a lot in the idea of collaboration, sharing and also participation’, through the development of participatory projects, in which he challenges communities to participate in collective creations, as is the case with Imagens Verdes, which started in 2022 and has already had three editions. The project, which originated in the Fontainhas community gardens, aims to promote artistic creation with Bonfim's senior community. ‘The idea of working with seniors came from the loneliness felt in cities; people are increasingly lonely,’ he says. ‘The main aim of this project is to get people out of the house, to take part in various activities.’

Funded by the Orçamento Colaborativo, Imagens Verdes consists of different artistic workshops, lasting two to three months, which take place at Casa d'Artes do Bonfim. The latest edition took place at the end of last year and culminated in the construction of a collaborative ceramic tile panel, led by artist Adriana Cajj based on an idea from one of the participants. ‘Constelação de Azulejo’ was inaugurated on 30 November on one of the walls of Junta de Freguesia do Bonfim.

If Imagens Verdes started out as an Ivan's idea, it only took shape thanks to the Barda Collective, a group of artists mostly based in Porto, whose work focuses on creating synergies between communities and territories through experimental dialogues. “The collective was born out of the desire to create; we often lived together, we had photography as a language, or as a technique, which connected us, and we all work essentially in the world of visual arts and performance,” she says. “We ended up forming an association to be able to work in the field and, at an early stage, we won an application for an intervention in Serra do Açor, with artistic residencies and the promotion of workshops with communities, which culminated in exhibitions in Arganil and Góis.”

This was the Porvir project, which took place last year in four villages in the Serra do Açor where Ivan was in residence for two months, having developed a visual game, one of his passions, which reflected on the literary culture of Beira, “with quotes from authors that related to the environment, and from a word cloud created by the local community that identified that place”.

“The most interesting thing about this type of project is that something is always left behind, there are tangible results; a person goes from an exhibition to an intervention on the ground, in a participatory project, and we manage to produce contact between people, which otherwise wouldn't have happened,” the artist stresses. “People live so close to each other, but they don't communicate."

This is a reality that the artist wants to counteract. “An important part of my artistic work is to create social bonds and promote community spirit,” he stresses.

Visual games to translate the world

The pedagogical aspect is also “very present” in his artistic work. “It's the main thing, it's what I like doing most.” To this end, she has been developing various games, as a playful tool accessible to various people, to work on visual literacy. These visual games aim to “translate images”, which is like saying “translate the world”. “The universe of play works on communication between people,” he points out. The games he creates “invite people to look at images and question them”. “Why do I like a certain image? What elements make it attractive to me?”, he explains.

“Ideas for not changing the world”, one of the games she showed us, created in 2023 at a residence in San Blas, is the result of ‘collecting the archaeology of objects discarded by people’, having produced square resin pieces with them to translate local images. The game consists of using nine squares of different colors to translate or represent a particular image, creating patterns. “I would invite people to take part, they would give me an image of themselves, I would print it on the spot, and the person would reproduce their photograph with these materials."