There’s a quote from one of the characters in one of my favorite books, Sembene Ousmane’s God’s Bits of Wood. Itgoes, “Before one has white hairs, one must first have them black.” I’ve always felt that it signified holding onto the lived experience one gets when they’re young, to bolster the wisdom you gain when you get older.
That phrase came to mind again when I had the chance to become acquainted with the work of photographer Sandra Cattaneo Adorno. The photographer, who hails from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, didn’t even pick up a camera until the age of 60. Her first foray into photography was the result of her daughter enrolling them both into a class led by Alex and Rebecca Norris Webb in Barcelona, Spain. “I fell it love with it right from the first class”, Adorno said in an interview with Street Photography Magazine. She also shared how she was the least artistically inclined in her family, with one sibling being a painter and sculptor and another being a writer.
Cattaneo Adorno’s work has steadily become notable in the world of photography, releasing four books - The Other Half of the Sky (2019), Águas de Ouro (2020), Scarti di Tempo (2022) and Ten Years (2024). Cattaneo Adorno’s maturation as a photographer stands out in the manner of which she depicts street scenes as an ethereal display of energy. The photos show people in everyday moments such as going to the beach or vendors alongside a road, cast in a multitude of hues that carry light to the viewer’s eye like one would lift a cup of espresso to the lips for a first sip at sunrise.
Her work gained a prodigious amount of attention, enough to have her first solo exhibition take place at the 60th Venice Biennale, held in 2024. Earlier this year in May, Cattaneo Adorno returned to Venice again for a new exhibition for the 61st Biennale.
Fragments of Light is a vivid representation of the evolutionfrom her first exhibition, Ten Years. Visitors were greeted by a video projection serving as a portal to the main gallery, which featured 55 images displayed in concert with wordsselected by curator Koyo Kouoh that invited guests to marrytheir sight and other senses with the display as one would slip their feet into inviting warm water at the edge of the beach.
They moved on to the centerpiece, thirteen of Adorno’s monochromatic images printed in silver ink on dark blue paper, contrasting vividly with the vermillion walls. As visitors moved through the gallery, the images shifted in response totheir movements, corresponding to Cattaneo Adorno’s vision.The finale boasted fragments of a photograph splayed across nine curtain panels set before an expansive window that overlooked the Grand Canal, as “É luxo so” from João Gilberto served as the auditory backdrop.
It showed a mastery by Cattaneo Adorno that she admitted came after some honest reflection. “You don’t expect to discover something at sixty,” she said in her interview with Ashley Riffo. “You normally think you’re wrapping up. You’re closing down.”
For Sandra Cattaneo Adorno, the photography she has shared with the world so far shows that there is always something meaningful to take up, no matter how far along in life we may be. And to always be curious about what lies between the light and the shadows.