valentina vitols photo writing

Valentina Vitols Photography I Creative Writing

Copyright © 2005-2009 Valentina Vitols. All rights reserved. Photographic and written material in this document cannot be cannot be reproduced without prior

permission of the author.


Copyright © 2005-2009 Valentina Vitols. All rights reserved. Photographic and written material in this document cannot be cannot be reproduced without prior permission

of the author.




Writing Sample. Excerpt from "Beyond Photo Elemental: Denise Lira-Ratinoff's visual offering of the emotions of a first glance." Feature article for Art Voices Magazine. December 2008/Issue 10. By Valentina Vitols

At the end of 1997, Denise Lira-Ratinoff woke up to a new vision after collapsing into a painful lights-out episode she doesn’t remember well. A week later, the one-time black and white, abstract painter from Santiago, Chile, who moved to San Miguel de Allende in Mexico and later to Havana, Cuba, to experiment with printmaking and lithography, underwent a life-changing experience: she was diagnosed with a brain tumor.

Fortunately, Lira-Ratinoff got well. After her recovery from surgery, she exchanged her brushes for a camera, leaving behind her abstract work and diving into life’s realism through her images. She was ready to “photograph every detail, every moment, every color and every abstract form that nature holds.” Until that moment, her work was monochromatic.

After this experience, Lira-Ratinoff ’s work turned to color. Like a mutable metaphor, Lira-Ratinoff dramatically switched empty and colorless forms for a passionate approach to vibrant—yet formal and magnificent—imagery. “After the surgical procedure, the need to create and to continue with pictorial or graphic abstractions had completely disappeared. I was no longer capable of facing a blank canvas,” she says.

Over the past eight years, Lira-Ratinoff has been exploring the interaction between humans and nature through installations in order to create temporary experiences intended to establish closeness with nature.

Lira-Ratinoff speaks quickly and with an enthusiasm that reflects how immersed she is in the work she has been developing since she took a camera in her hands, always driven by reinventing people's’ perceptions. Her quest is focused on working with elements that everyone can recognize and need no translation, presenting them in an unexpected way. Lira-Ratinoff has been faithful to this since her first installations.

In 2000—back in Chile—she put together an installation in collaboration with video artist Isabel Garcia. Named Art for the Sighted, KM 9 Route 68, it was a triptych that consisted of a straw house made of 5000 bales of hay and two billboards, each with an area of about 500 square feet. Together the structure and the photographic images were intended to induce a reflection on the “image and the imaginary”.

valentina vitols photo writing

Education

valentina vitolsphotography

valentina vitolsat

creative writing copyright

written material

prior permission

photographic images

liraratinoff s work

abstract work