Page 421 - Arte e Historia

Art and History
at the Banco popular dominicano visual arts collection
his astonishment capacity while contemplating natural scenes
and our country’s human groups, so he can dazzle us with his
poetic images full of radiant colour. We can say Batista has
created and style of looking at his homeland and its people.
His photos unravel our people warmth and hopes. Banco
Popular congratulates master Domingo Batista for this won-
derful book, that gathers up his more recent production and,
specially, for the photographic showing we open today for the
audience joy». (M.A.G. «Tiempo de Luz» presentation/
Domingo Batista, September the 2nd, 1993).
«Light Time 22. Bao River, Bao Valley,» photography
black and white. 30x40 cm., 1993 v «Light Time 7,» photog-
raphy black and white. 20x30 cm., 1993 v «Light Time 6, Bao
River, Mata Grande,» photography black and white. 24x30 cm.,
1993 v «Light Time 5, San Rafael River, Infrared Caribbean,»
photography black and white. 24x30 cm., 1993 v «Light Time.
Trunk and Moon,» photography black and white. 20x40 cm.,
1993 v «Light Time 3. Villa Altagracia’s little house,» pho-
tography black and white. 24x30 cm., 1993 v «Light Time 9,»
photography black and white. 24x30 cm., 1993 v «Landscape,»
colour photography/paper. 40x49 cm., 1984 v «Landscape II,»
colour photography/paper, 50x39 cm., 1984 v «Untitled,»
colour photography/paper, 39x50 cm., no date.
Ansel Adams, an American teacher of photography,
in 1982’ letter writes to him «Dear Domingo Batista; thanks
for the book that has just reached me.» I enjoyed browsing it.
I can see that you have worked long and hardly and, also feel
great love for you art! Continue with the good work. I definitely
wish you luck!»
Pedro Mir, national poet wrote in 1995: «Domingo Ba-
tista has the indomitable power to lead us to the heart of things.
Today more than never I trust his art to walk the paths of light,
the Sun and the soul.»
Juan Bosch, writer and former President of the Re-
public writes in 1989: «To do with a camera what Domingo
Batista does, is required to have eyes able to apprehend colours,
shades and volumes perceived only for those who have brought
to life the conditions of creator… Because we must live long
years to find the privileged being who can convert a steel and
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glass instrument such as a camera on a painter, on of those that
are born at the rate of one in every century.»
Jeannette Miller in his book «History of the Domini-
can photography, Part 2,» says: «In 1980 Domingo Batista
(1946) won photography’s first prize of Geomundo, the inter-
national magazine, and this important recognition places him
definitely as one of the heads of the Dominican photographic
movement that had been carried out from 1968 with the found-
ing of the photographic group Thursday 68. (…) The colour and
the landscape have been distinctive elements of a work that over-
came the gratuity and the beauty of the island surroundings, to
penetrate it with the significance of a divine will that proposed
it in constant mutation, so his work constantly raises new vi-
sions on the subject of the island, its people, their environment,
their ways of life and places inhabited by them».
Danilo De los Santos, the author of this work, wrote
in the early 1980s: «With Domingo Batista, we can’ t have
economy of judgment to recognize him in his human endeavour,
with his public achievements, but above all with his work of
artistic perseverance, in which the quality has prevailed as well
as its sincerity. We do not go in circles to consider him such a
good photographer as he is a good artist, recognizing that many
names of Dominican photography we can find them first, but
not the second, because photography as art is not just a manipu-
lation of mechanical procedures, but an orderly maturation of
what has to be the means of expressing talent, sensitivity and
awareness. A photographer who is not an artist is hardly a doer.
The artist who is a photographer is who knows how to give
meaning to what he does. In Domingo Batista, we appreciate
this last condition».
Marianne de Tolentino, art critic has said: «Undoubt-
edly, Domingo Batista is the poet of Dominican photography,
means of expression that it leads to the climax capturing the
“uncaught” by most detail, exploring the romanticism of things,
of the land and the people, making us to think differently about
photography and its emotional aesthetic potential. The artist
has the gift of “seeing” with a particular sensibility and spiritu-
ally communicate feelings and anxieties to their subjects, to the
surrounding native reality.»