Brazil Today is a series of four postcards booklets with images altered by Regina Silveira in 1977: one is dedicated to natural scenes; the second, to cities; the third, to birds; and the fourth, to the native Indians of Brazil. These 24 cards show Brazil in 1977 – which is pretty well the same, four […]
Amidst the urban squalor that permeated the city of São Paulo in the 1980s, the photographer and filmmaker A. C. D’ÁVILA documented the everyday life at Estação da Luz, a railway station built in the 19th century in the neighbourhood of Luz [“light”, in Portuguese] in São Paulo, which symbolises the splendour of the old […]
With Genesis, his most ambitious project so far, dedicated to portraying regions of the planet that foster nature at its untouched form or groups of humans that are isolated from civilization, Sebastião Salgado has attained unprecedented visibility for a Brazilian photographer. His entrepreneurial sense has transformed ten years of work into books, exhibitions and a […]
Vilém Flusser was one of the most original philosophers of the second half of the 20th century. And it is only now that we are beginning to understand much of what he wrote in the 1980s. Born in 1920 in Prague, he took refuge in England in 1939. The following year he emigrated to Brazil, […]
The new Brazilian edition of Gilberto Freyre’s classic book removed the slave quarters and the black slaves from its cover. Intrigued by the change, the history professor MAURICIO LISSOVSKY shows how the old slave quarters have lost their meaning of oppression and cruelty to become a place of enjoyment. The result of these shifts is […]
The nonagenarian photographer from Minas Gerais state immortalised the architectural heritage and the society of Diamantina. But his career got a new impulse in 1943, with the Labour Laws, promulgated by President Getúlio Vargas. When he made it compulsory for workers to have a work card with a photo, that was all that was needed […]
RAUL GARCEZ (1949-1987) photographed the Várzea do Carmo housing estate, the oldest in São Paulo, between October 1979 and April 1980. His images recorded the intimacy of the residents in a rare combination of anthropological viewpoint and formal investigation. The housing estate Várzea do Carmo was designed in 1942 by Attilio Corrêa Lima for the Industrial […]
The different ways ANTONIO MANUEL uses photography in his work. IN HIS RECENT EXHIBITION at the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro (December 2013 to February 2014), Antonio Manuel showed two new installation works, one of which entitled Até que a imagem desapareça [until the image disappears]. For many years he focused only on […]
In conversation with ZUM about his latest book, critic and professor FRED RITCHIN addresses the dilemmas facing contemporary photojournalism, the role of the photographer and the challenges posed by digital media. Ritchin suggests that journalists find new ways to narrate events visually and confesses his enthusiasm for citizen journalism, even with the dangers it brings […]
For five decades, MALICK SIDIBÉ has been Mali’s unmistakable visual narrator. Still working from a simple studio, he has portrayed the effervescence of decolonization and a people rediscovering its identity. WHEN IT COMES TO MASTERS of portraiture, many renowned photographers come to mind, such as Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, Philippe Halsman, and many others. And there are […]
