With his mastery of framing, natural light, and rigorous narration, Roberto Badin continues his exploration of spaces, magnified by his eye that captures their simplicity and their infinity. The Rio de Janeiro-born photographer leaves behind the contrasting Japanese metropolises he immortalized in Inside Japan to immerse us here in the city of Biarritz, where he lives. “When you grow up facing the sea, the oceanic feeling never leaves you,” he explains.
His new work, Après l’été, reveals a more personal approach, drawing its sources from art, architecture, cinema, and literature. Especially in George Perec, through what he called “the infra-ordinary,” where the banal and the everyday become a fascinating aesthetic. “What struck me most when I moved to the Basque Coast was the light and the changes in atmosphere, which are even stronger outside the season.
The emotion that emerges is so powerful that I felt the need to transcribe it into images. In this expedition, made on foot across a radius of 4 km, equivalent to the distance of the beach of Copacabana where he grew up, each is composed as “a painting where the light serves as a construction tool.” For this virtuoso, who discovered the medium at the age of 14, and where the beaches and the graphic aesthetics of Oscar Niemeyer’s buildings are among his first shots, this has become “a journey with these imaginary borders…”
Nathalie Dassa
After the summer, Éditions 37.2, 160 pages, text Ana Cardinale, 45 €, March 2023
Photo credits Roberto Badin
United States – California