This week we are celebrating the artistry of five unique artists exploring the frontiers of cyanotype. Today the lens is on New York City-based Brazilian artist Ronaldo Aguiar and his 2022 series, Mudlark. In this project, Aguiar collects mid-century debris from Dead Horse Bay (Brooklyn, NYC), photographs it using cyanotype, and presents the prints on handmade porcelain plaques. The artworks, depicting bottle arrangements that echoe the quiet formalism of Morandi, are a tactile exploration of time and fragility. Delicately repaired with gold using the Kintsugi technique, the pieces also serve as a meditation on repair and renewal. An interview with the artist follows.

Ronaldo Aguiar is a photographer based in São Paulo, where he also grew up. His journey began with film and photography, and over the years, he’s developed a body of work based on traditional and alternative photographic techniques, with a strong passion for cyanotype. He likes to say that he doesn’t just make images; he dives deep into image research, examining how visual narratives intersect with fields such as Natural History, Archaeology, Astronomy, and Anthropology, which are his frequent and primary subjects.

Ronaldo Aguiar: According to the Oxford Dictionary, Mudlark is (chiefly Brit.) “a person who scavenges in river mud for objects of value.” I didn’t know I was practicing something like that until I came across a text that told a story about people who scavenge the banks of the Thames River in London to find archaeological artifacts. At Dead Horse Bay in Brooklyn, I wasn’t searching for any specific valuable thing. I was driven to this place because I had read somewhere about this little bay that was littered with bottles and pottery sherds from the mid-20th century. Somehow, I thought I was doing a Historical Archaeology of some sort. A kind of urban archaeology. But suddenly, I was struck by a melancholic feeling. Seeing all those bottles (most of them broken) and pieces of glass made me think about the passage of time. It was, in fact, a feeling of seeing beauty in a sad, imperfect thing. So, I decided I had to turn this experience into a project.

RA: As a Zen Buddhist practitioner, I have been familiar with the simple yet profoundly complex concept that nothing lasts forever and everything is impermanent. Also, I love the beautiful Japanese concept of Wabi-sabi, which is, very roughly speaking, an aesthetic that finds beauty in things that are imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. For many years, when I was developing and printing photographs in traditional ways— using a photo lab and printing with printers — I was searching for perfection. It was a very suffering experience for me. I spent sleepless nights struggling to achieve the perfect printing (no dust, no noise, no scratches, etc), which was insane. One day, I was so stressed that I decided to explore a different approach, and that’s when I created my first cyanotype project. The cyanotype made me realize that photographs can be beautifully textured, rough, impermanent (some pictures fade), imperfect, and evocative, just like our memories (and for “Mudlark,” I pushed it to the extreme). I never looked back.

RA: If you look carefully, objects carry a significant amount of personality, just like people do. They emanate a vibration. They are attached to the person who made them or who had them. They carry the aura of the time they were made. It is obvious that by looking at the bottles that I collected on Dead Horse Bay, you can see the passage of time. While walking on the bay, listening to the tinkling sound of the water hitting the shards of glass, and seeing all those bottles sculpted by years of water crashing, breaking, and smoothing them, I was struck by a deep, melancholic yet beautiful feeling of impermanence in the sense of transformation. So, I knew I had to do a project with them.

RA: It evolved from playing with forms and light and even with the photo process itself (I began this project by using Salt Printing) to a more personal experience. When I started going to the bay, I thought the work would be about how light changes an object. That happened because I used to leave the bottles on my windowsill to dry, and they looked different depending on the sun (even at night, with the city lights reflecting through them). But then, when I switched from Salt Printing to Cyanotype, the feeling became bluer, both literally and metaphorically. Over the past six years, I’ve been listening to what this project wants from me. I admit I even fought a bit with the idea of the melancholic approach, but I firmly believe that the work is the one in charge when we’re doing a project. I still feel that this project is not yet complete, hence the “ongoing” part, but for now, I will let it rest.

RA: This October, I will have a new exhibition opening in our newly renovated Soho Photo Gallery space, which we recently relocated from Tribeca to Chelsea. After coming to New York City for more than 30 years now, I decided to pay tribute to this city that stirred up in me all the emotions a human being can have! Just like my hometown of São Paulo, I have developed a complex relationship with NYC. The installation is titled “Let’s Never Sleep.” It will feature more than one hundred color and black-and-white Polaroids of the city, inspired by noir movies, along with some accompanying texts. I like to say that this exhibition is an apocryphal memoir and a movie edit room. I hope that when the time comes, all of you can go and see it!