How William Rice Created O NOVO RIO’s Visual Fantasy
On inspirations
Travel is a primary inspiration for me. When you go somewhere new you see everything with newfound curiosity: the chatter on the pavements, the buildings, the smells, the noise on the street, how the air feels on your skin - what’s banal at home takes on new meaning somewhere else. Everything is sexier when it’s different. You become more open as you shed your comfort zones. In Rio it’s the life-force of the people that inspires the most - all the different ways of thinking, presenting new attitudes, clothes, hairstyles, music, how people show out on the street or the beach. Pain and joy. It’s endless theater for the outsider.
On references
You have a mental rolodex based on lived experience. I’m lucky to have had a cultural education through a life in music and all the artists I’ve loved always have a strong visual identity. New Order, Sade, Tyler, The Creator, Grace Jones, Bjork, Sylvester. Right now I love Lil Yachty, he is musically and visually incredible. These artists' work is always somewhere in the back of my mind. The people I’ve been lucky enough to photograph for this book are all icons too, I shoot everyone as if they are a pop star. Growing up with British style magazines such as The Face, iD, Dazed, they kind of became lifelong reference banks. In Rio I was studying the history of Brazilian photography and often referred to Alair Gomes and Walter Firmo who both capture the wonderfully strange magic of Brazil.
On Brazil's eclectic folklore
There are so many forms of mythological expression that take place across Brazil - ideas that have sprung from indigenous culture over the centuries, with newer additions rooted in colonialism and slavery, bringing in elements of African religion and other diasporic cultures as well as from Europe and the rest of South America. Animals, nature and landscape play a big part in Brazilian folklore which is so visually arresting and a joy to photograph.
On photography as a medium to push boundaries
Are you angry? Are you horny? Are you a pimp, a john, a pusher or a user? Take a picture of it, it might just change the world. You can explore things in photography that you might not in everyday life. The camera is a barrier to shyness and convention. Especially so if you grow up on any kind of periphery when you are told not to look at things in the way you’d like to. You can create situations, put people together in certain ways, indulge in fantasy, work to a political or social agenda, mess with gender, explore sexuality, race, religion, desire. When an artist elicits an emotional response to an idea, you have a formula for change.
On the work process
Photography is freeing in that there can be no process at all. You can just pick up a camera, go for a walk and let life approach you. A lot of the incidental photos in this book are shot in that way, exploring Ipanema or Copacabana and finding the things that excite. The detailed chapters are more produced and working in this way is also a thrill, starting with the germ of an idea and then finding a group of like-minded creatives - models, stylists and producers, which invents this amazing collaborative village that you inhabit for the day. Often one person's idea about a piece of clothing, a hairstyle or a pose can create a totally new narrative and you finish the day with images different from the ones you were planning. And these unexpected pleasures are often the most rewarding.
On the message of art as a cultural weapon for change
Art works. Nan Goldin shows us all the way. And my personal favorite artwork in any medium, Zoe Leonard’s ‘I Want A Dyke For President’ from 1992 lives inside me everyday and forever.
