Now come and see this side: we no longer had a view of the sunrise, but look at the new roof that has appeared; well, now the morning sun arrives half an hour later.<\/p>\n
Real Estate Speculation, Italo Calvino<\/p>\n
Waking up, opening the window and letting the sun in. A simple and banal gesture, routine, that is part of everyone’s life and daily routine. We open the window to see what the weather is like, to feel the temperature, to look at the city, to air out the house, or simply to let the daylight in. But in cities, increasingly crowded with people, with buildings ever narrower and closer to one another, views and light have become luxuries. More than opening the window and letting the sun in, we open the window and find ourselves facing a concrete wall or, perhaps, the neighbor’s window. And when our view is another window, we consequently and simultaneously become someone else’s view. Whether we like it or not, we are all being observed.<\/p>\n
And so we close the window, seeking a bit of privacy, trying to escape annoying noises or the curious glances of those anonymous acquaintances who inhabit our daily lives, or rather, strangers who are already so intimate that they could often weave long descriptions of our most banal habits. Our Acquaintances by Sight.<\/p>\n
But who are these people? What is the view like from that angle? What’s on the other side of the wall? Starting from these questions and from a personal production that had already been focusing on the relationships between architecture and living in the city, habits and daily life, I became interested in photographing these city views that I didn’t know, the view from other people’s windows, as well as the environment that the facade wall hid.<\/p>\n
In a reverse fl\u00e2nerie, where about 40 apartments in Porto Alegre were visited, in addition to photographs taken from windows in other cities, the works presented here cast a critical and poetic eye on a situation that is increasingly common in the contemporary urban context: buildings with windows that are too close together. But even if the city’s configuration is beyond our control, the way we relate to it and position ourselves in certain situations still depends on us. To open or close the window? In the end, it’s all a matter of perspective.<\/p>\n
Let\u00edcia Lampert
\nJune 2013<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Now come and see this side: we no longer had a view of the sunrise, but look at the new roof that has appeared; well, now the morning sun arrives half an hour later. Real Estate Speculation, Italo Calvino Waking up, opening the window and letting the sun in. A …<\/p>\n