Bored Panda contacted Vitor and asked him how he started his adventure with photography, and what led him to start using the long exposure technique to create these dreamlike and surreal images. We learned that: “I started my path as an artist with watercolor and drawing when I was a teenager. From then on, I became interested in photography as a more immediate means of producing images, even though initially it didn't have such a direct relationship with drawing.
When I switched from analog to digital photography in 2006, during a period I lived in Montreal, I started experimenting with long exposure on my own. Discovering the possibility of creating images with ghosts and traces of light, I began playing with the techniques and identifying with the results, increasingly relating them to the drawing and ideas I wanted to represent, more than just recording the world as it presents itself.”
We were also wondering how nature influences Schietti’s work. He told us: “I've always loved being in nature, and one of my other passions besides photography, climbing, brings me into constant contact with natural environments, with stone. I've also always enjoyed traveling around Brazil and abroad in search of natural beauty: national parks in the USA, islands in Panama, volcanoes in Guatemala, beaches in Australia, and safaris in South Africa. I was lucky enough that my parents allowed me to travel to some places while I ventured to others on my own, bitten by the bug of discovering this beautiful planet that we inhabit, and that we are destroying at the expense of individualistic pleasures.
My landscape photography has always been linked to this relationship of reverence towards Mother Nature and our smallness and audacity in front of her, the rebellious children that we are. When I have the opportunity, I seek to draw connections between our thoughts and our actions in the natural environment, but in a subtle, poetic way, focusing on the beautiful rather than the shocking to bring about positive changes.”
The photographer shared with us some details about the creative process behind his pictures: “The technique I developed for the Impermanent Sculptures project and its consequences came from a process of teaching what I already knew about long exposure in a workshop I set up in 2015. When studying to better teach, I combined techniques that I learned from other artists and applied them to what interested me: poetic portraits of nature.
Trees became my main subject, but not my only one, for drawing contours and extensions of natural lines with sparks of fire during long exposures, a technique known as Light Painting. When lighting the trees, I try to draw attention to an energy that the tree and other living beings possess, which is pulsating, but also invisible to the common eye. I want to convey a sense of wonder and mystery for the natural world, which is sometimes confused with the supernatural.”
We asked Vitor to tell us about the biggest challenges he faces when using the long exposure technique. We found out: “My biggest challenges are two: finding places that are accessible but at the same time imposing and that do not run the risk of causing damage or go against local regulations regarding the use of fire for the performances that produce light painting photos, even though the sparks I use have low flammability.
When I produce them in Brazil, I usually choose places that are humid or close to water, or at least that don't have dense forest that can easily catch fire. In Spain, where I have lived since 2017, the sparks that I find for sale are of much lower power, so this risk is reduced, but also the effects that I achieved with the trees that I portrayed in Brazil are not the same. So here, I adapted the project to another type of light painting, using wooden plates with laser-cut slots, which I suspend with a tripod in the environment I want to portray. The results of this adaptation were part of the Sacred Geometry project”.
The photographer continued and mentioned some other solutions that helped him to make his project work in Spain: “Another adaptation I made to overcome the lack of more powerful sparks available in Spain was to develop the series with bonsai, thus using a very small spark, but which in proportion to the miniature trees of a collaborator's bonsai, produces a beautiful effect as well.
Another challenge I face is to renew myself and develop other techniques derived from those I have already used, so as not to stagnate doing the same thing over and over again. In 2016, I tried light painting with water for the first time, and this year, 2024, I am returning to this idea, combining it with sparks in a new project, currently under development.”
Lastly, Schietti shared with us: “I believe the message I want to convey is one of connection. Everything is connected, and we are also connected to the planet. We should be more mindful of this; it seems we have distanced ourselves so much from the natural world that we consider it hostile and something to be dominated and shaped, and in this process, we are destroying it. My images evoke many feelings and may not directly be an environmental and political critique, but I hope that the positive sensations they awaken can also evoke a sense of responsibility and re-connection with the natural world.”
