Tanara Stuermer
Photographer
Tanara Stuermer discovered the documentary power of photography while studying image theory during her history studies in southern Brazil. She began photographing in 2009 and initially focused on street photography, exploring in her images moments of life and solitude in Rio de Janeiro, the city where she has lived for 18 years.
Today, she challenges the limits of photography by juxtaposing overlapping opaque and translucent prints. In the “Altinha” series, this enables her to highlight the
movements of bodies in the image, and to convey what she feels when watching the spectacle of beach soccer in Rio de Janeiro. With this series, she won the FotoRio Révélation prize in 2023. Her work is part of the French National Library’s “Un fonds photographique brésilien” collection.
“Altinha is a popular game played on the beaches of Rio de Janeiro: Ipanema, Leblon, Copacabana, Leme, etc… The game consists in keeping the ball in the air, without the players being able to use their hands. This Carioca sport par excellence first appeared in the 1960s and is best played near water, where your feet won’t be burnt by the hot sand. I’ve always loved watching this sport. Right from the start, I found the spirit of solidarity that binds the players together magnificent. There’s no competition. There’s no rivalry. They all have the same, playful objective: not to let the ball touch the ground.”
“I’ve achieved a narrative, a choreography, as if punctuated by the beat of a drum, in a movement that multiplies into a single image.”
“I then superimposed these photographs with prints on tracing paper, in cuts that isolated bodies and movements, then combined the images in scenes that projected a hallucinatory force.”
“I tried to break down the Altinha into sequences inspired by the work of Eadweard Muybridge and Étienne-Jules Marey.
Today, for me, Altinha and Capoeira (this Afro-Brazilian martial art which is as much a martial art as a dance) have finally come together. Both are unifying, inclusive and democratic; both require flexibility, adaptation and harmony. They are activities that create relationships of solidarity and equality between athletes.” Tanara Stuermer
