Helen Salomão : “Bloodless periphery, poetry, and the non-standardization of female bodies”

The Bahian photographer and poet, has been building bridges and opening paths to Black protagonism through documentary photography. The portrait artist, who currently lives in São Paulo, is also studying photographic art direction and travels in the audiovisual medium.

Her photography brings the urgency of the present, translated into works that exalt Black women and their gender diversity. In Helen's records, life pulses through bodies, which surpasses patterns and cries out for freedom. They are women who assume the protagonism of their stories and their art; building affection. The expression of this protagonism is - as the Brazilian feminist Lélia Gonzalez taught us - Helen Salomão herself; who has exhibited in places such as the Museum of Art of Bahia, the Museum of Modern Art of Rio, and the Fowler Museum of UCLA in the United States.

Helen says her mother has always been an artist; defining her as a talented braider. The influence of everyday life, however, had a huge impact on her work.

That's how her gaze awakened to life and to the art that pulsed around her; from new reflections. This look has reverberated through her work, whose representations of everyday life empower Black women and men and express their affections.

Examples of this are in one of her projects, together with the photographer, Davi Reis, named "Dupla Exposição.” In it, narratives are constructed using analog photography, but published on social networks, totally deconstructing the concepts of exhibition space and non-accessibility.

Another example of the power of representation in Helen Salomão's work is her self-portrait series: "The Days Were Like This." The artist defines her proposal as "bloodless periphery, poetry, and the non-standardization of female bodies." In the portraits, she exposes potentialities, pains, anguishes; but also the need to stop, look at oneself, and learn to love one's own body.

Being at home in today's context is also an opportunity to look at yourself with love. With this, the artist's creation overcomes the visions of beauty and transcends them. The image becomes a political position and a healing tool because of the importance of placing this "`Corpo no Mundo" (body in the world), as Luedji Luna sings; also photographed by the artist.

Discovered By Photography

Helen's artistic trajectory developed naturally; driven by curiosity. According to her, it was based on professional discoveries that crossed her life and brought her to a reflection about not belonging in certain spaces. It was the need to know herself that led her to the artistic experience. Helen began her studies as a self-taught scholar until she entered the Oi Kabum School of Art and Technology. There, she began to question her place in the world through her perspective as a Black woman and her periphery cutout:

"I bought a semi-used camera in the quest to get closer to art. I had no reference and didn't understand anything about photography. I started studying on my own and I became more and more interested in each discovery I made myself. I wanted to take a course, but I couldn't afford one. Until, at a certain moment, I learned about this free art and technology course for young people in the community. I passed in the selection and, in this space, became more than a photographer, I became an artist. Photography became my field of discussion and my artivism."

The search for forms of artistic expression took place next to becoming aware of oneself. Helen says that to talk about this discovery is to be often questioned about the possibility of a Black person discovering himself or herself as Black:

"I am a light-skinned Black woman, born and raised within the community. I discovered myself as a Black woman from experiences outside my 'bubble', with which I could understand the subtlety and structured scheme of racism."

The issue of colorism is especially dear to Helen, for whom it is painful to be in a 'non-place', while Black with light skin. According to her, this non-place represents the certainty of not being part of the white world, but often not being accepted by the Black community, when seen for her privileges. As a result, having speech annulled when treating pain and trauma. Helen concludes: "This is one of the many ways to disarticulate ourselves. That's why, in my work, I talk about the importance of each person being the protagonist of their own stories and knowing their place of speech."

Self-Portraiture As A Political Position 

Understanding one's own place of speech requires reflection and care. One of the tools chosen by Helen for this is self-portraiture: "

Self-portraiture, for me, is a process of self-healing, of undressing myself from my own prisons. It is the search for inner love - of which Bell Hooks speaks in the text, 'Living in Love'. It is forgiving myself for the judgments and for the search for an image that may never exist. It is to understand and enjoy this body in the now, to reflect the image beyond the aesthetic. It is to think about my trajectory. It is to heal and discuss pain. It's the way I found to put my digital in history and understand, in practice, how to further humanize my work."

Writing also helps Helen in this process, in tune with photography: "The writing, for me, is a vent and a joint construction with my photography. It's one more place so that my story won't be lost in time."

The Body As Language

In "Casa, Corpo, Pele, Parede” (House, Body, Skin, Wall), Helen looks at the beauty of dissenting bodies - and sees the marks, experiences, and subjectivities in them. The body becomes a political, ancestral territory. In this project, she says she seeks to "naturalize real female bodies, which most of the time, go through a dehumanization process."

Photography then becomes resistance. A negation of the public body, available to other people's judgments and with its esteem directly affected, its affirmation a sacred temple and political territory:

"It is the search for a respectful and honest look to understand that the body is language; it is the foundation, it is political, it is the reverberation of the inner, it is the ancestry, it is the territory, it is the temple, it is time, it is communication, it is welcome, it is the generation. It is full of unique experiences and stories that can generate representativeness for other women and reflections for the whole society."

Helen's work shows the artistic strength and political power Black women have in resignifying the concept of beauty in contemporary photography. Her camera becomes an ally in the anti-racist struggle and a way of establishing self-image as a mechanism to combat epistemicide.

According to Helen, "beauty goes beyond a 'beautiful' image." For the artist, the beautiful is the construction of the real. And what is the future?

"The real thing, in my conception, is our truth and the truth of what we portray. Genocide, epistemicide, and necropolitics are open wounds in our bodies and in our souls. We die before, and after, the shot. Achille Mbembe says: 'When one denies the humanity of another, any violence becomes possible, from aggression to death. And this is a problem of which we are not the cause. This is a white man's problem.'"

The Sides Of The Bridge

Helen says she builds her work for the Black population in its diversity. Through art, she defends being able to show her potential, her condition as a holder of knowledge and intellectuality; of beauty and power. According to her, it is essential "for us to identify ourselves in the other, see possibilities, and generate long-term memory."

Photography can be an expansion of ancestry, uniting those who came before future generations. The register of Black bodies, then, transcends the concept of empowerment:

"I am grateful to those who came before me, especially the Black women for opening the way. I am grateful to be able to access photography, even though it was not meant for me. I want to build positive narratives and be a bridge. I build for the now and for future generations. To know where we are going, we have to know where we came from!"

According to Helen, it is important to have the digital in the story; a real one, told and starred in each one:

"I need my great-great-granddaughter to know who I was, which path I took, that she can use my last name, and have access to places I don't have."

Helen also seeks to know who she is in each portrait, at each poem, as these verses from her self-portrait series “Os dias eram assim” show:

I Clandestine, insane, hostile, dose of cachaça, mandacaru love, defeated.

I Clandestine, bleed in a dead-end, clotted flower, shattered, sometimes, almost never cry.

I Clandestine, third of one of the halves, pow, pow, gunshots, rotten sorrows, undertaken, rotten wounds, invaded woman, dirty dish in the sink, at noontime, bitch that broke 7 ways.

I Clandestine, aged, lost my usefulness after aborting empty relationships.

Eu Clandestina, insana, hostil, dose de cachaça, amor mandacaru, vencida.

Eu Clandestina, sangro em beco sem saída, flor coagulada, despedaçada, vezes, quase nunca chora.

Eu Clandestina, terço de uma das metades, pow, pow, pow, tiros, mágoas apodrecidas, empretecidas, podres feridas, mulher invadida, prato sujo na pia, no horário de meio dia, puta que pariu 7 caminhos.

Eu clandestina, envelhecida, perdi a serventia depois de abortar relacionamentos vazios.

Helen Salomão is currently selling signed prints of her work, please visit her Instragram page: here Buy and support her amazing work. She ships worldwide.

By Mirella Ferreira

Photos by Helen Salomão