Dear Giovanna Lanna...
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes, 7 seconds. Contains 824 words
Dear Giovanna,
How do you find the wallpapers, shapes, and everything else to make your compositions? I’d kill for a print in my mid-century modern dream home that I will absolutely own one day (maybe). Thank you for blessing my eyes with such fresh, timeless imagery!
I came across Giovanna Lanna’s work while looking through issue ten of Broccoli Magazine, “A Magazine for Cannabis Lovers”. Over the past three years, I’ve been enjoying the benefits of hemp flower and have taken it upon myself to keep on top of cannabis news, art and culture in ways that keep the core values of equity in mind. I was struck by Lanna’s use of high-contrast light and backdrops when I got to her two/page spread that introduced the body of work.. It was my first time seeing the plant from such a unique, striking perspective.
Lanna is a Brazil-based photographer currently working out of Rio de Janerio. She’s a multi-media artist as well as the owner and curator of Inverso Galeria de Arte Contempoânea (inversogaleria.com), a contemporary art gallery located in Ouro Preto. Lanna utilizes photography and video installation to create bodies of work that explore various social criticisms and the nuances that come with them.(1) One such body of work is Tarja Preta (Black Stripe).
In her words from Broccoli Magazine:
“I love the way film photography works - the visual effect, the artisanal craftsmanship, is extremely poetic...Every color is a symbol; its absence gives more strength to the concept used here. For this series, my intention was to use the techniques and aesthetics of classic photography - gelatin silver prints - to visually relate to the conservative vision regarding the marihuana laws in Brazil. I have a mother with Crohn’s disease and a father who suffers from terrible chronic pain. When I came across families with serious illnesses looking for treatment, I realized that problems [with how Brazil regulates cannabis were] much bigger. “
(Out of curiosity, I did some quick research on the current cannabis laws in Brazil, and it doesn’t paint a pretty picture. In the article, Lanna mentions how the cost of a month’s worth of CBD treatments will cost around R$2,000.00, while that’s the equivalent of two times the Brazillian monthly wage. Click here to learn more about cannabis in Brazil. )
What’s particularly striking about this series is that there’s something almost nostalgic about it. The bold, graphic backdrop combined with the shape of the vessels for the plants are contained in come across as something akin to mid-century design. The arrangement, too, of the plants themselves is just so striking with the way they stand out as both a recognizable cannabis plant and their position that mimics any other flower for display. There’s something really quite precious about this series. It’s fun to look at, peaceful to take in, and still drives home the underlying theme that Lanna is exploring: the true complexities of cannabis politics. She mentions, too, in a lighthearted comment within the article, that while the plants were grown by her, they were so poor in quality that they were un-smokeable yet great fun to photograph. Hey, they still served their purpose of sparking joy!
Lanna has a knack for warping subjects, either with backdrops, placements, or photo editing, into ways that imply larger ideas. In her series Outline of Self, a single figure is warped and distorted into multiple formations across each individual photograph. The model becomes more outwardly alien-like with each distortion, her black and white zebra print being the most consistently recognizable part of the subject matter. What I love about this piece, and other series by artists like it, is that it leaves so much room for interpretation. This could very easily be commentary on the feminine form, it could represent an out of body experience, it could represent floating in between different states of consciousness, and anything in between. It’s open to interpretation and confident in its intentions. And of course, I cannot emphasize enough how the way she uses black and white just perfectly strikes my neurons.
Fellow photographer, Patricia Stagi, writes about Lanna:
“Many relationships are marked by the absence of permanence, where beings move in a volatile cycle, reinforcing the condition of being fluid, capable of compartmentalizing fragments of their memory and transforming them into editable analogues.'' (2)
Photography is one of those mediums that I’m less familiar with, even less familiar than things like ceramics or printmaking. So I’m always pleasantly surprised to see how artists are utilizing and manipulating the medium. People like Giovanna Lanna are important to keep tabs on, because how can one ignore the amazing marriage between explorations on social commentary and absolutely delicious usage of high-contrast imagery to catch the eye? It’s always important to see what our fellow creatives are working on overseas. And I’ve never been so thrilled to have purchased a magazine focused on cannabis activism out of curiosity.
- Sasha
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