IN THE FIRST DECADES OF THE 20TH CENTURY, the town of Crato, in the Cariri region [in the south of the state of Ceará, Northeast of Brazil], was a center radiating culture for the modernization of the entire region, with its imposing architecture, leafy squares and the iconic Crato Market, which brought together singers, the cordelistas [writers and illustrators of the typical woodcut story books of the Northeast], engravers, crafts and popular portraiture. The music of Luiz Gonzaga eternalized Crato in the northeastern imaginary, above all between the states of Ceará and Pernambuco, and the culture of the street market, with its multiplicity of relationships, aromas, flavors and images, impregnated the so-called “Cratinho de Açúcar” [Little Sugary Crato].

Telma’s father, Júlio Saraiva, was born in Crato in 1895. He was an entrepreneur and pioneered the manufacture in the region of handmade decorated cement tiles with his company Mosaicos Leão. He was also an urban technitian who worked with various town administrations. He was an assiduous reader and so fascinated by cinema and photography that he built his first camera himself. He started by photographing houses and markets, until he opened the first photographic studio in the town – J. Saraiva Photo – and then, as the business expanded, Photo Riso. At that time, the town had no electricity, so it was necessary to use mirrors, curtains and natural light to photograph. Júlio Saraiva married Maria Passos Arraes – Dona Mirou –, who soon became an active participant in the work of the studio, mastering the technical processes of developing and copying, besides helping out in the darkroom. Dona Mirou is considered the first female professional photographer in Ceará.

The couple had two children – Salviano Arraes Saraiva and Maria Telma Arraes Saraiva, who was named in honor of the American actress Thelma Todd. From an early age, Telma’s father took her to the movie theatres, telling her that she had to learn how to read quickly. However, it was the movie stars who fascinated the girl: in the words of Telma: “I saw my father taking those photographs and started dreaming about drawing the actors. I collected issues of a magazine full of photographs of the movie stars and put together a sketchbook, already copying my father when painting the photos. I would scrape the cores of colored pencils to make a powder I could use to imitate pastel paints. I had a complete album of these drawings. That’s when I started to want to take photos myself. I dressed up for the artists and wanted to be one of them.” 

Crato had a tradition of movie theaters: Cassino Sul Americano (1918) and Cine Moderno (1934) at that time were later joined by the Cine Rádio Araripe (1950s) and the Cinema Educadora (1961). Telma Saraiva was an assiduous client of Cine Moderno, which fueled her desire for different worlds and characters. 

She began her career in photography alongside her father and brother in the 1940s, when she was given her first instant camera. When she saw an advertisement for Marshall paints in the magazine A Cena Muda, she asked her brother to write a letter in English to purchase the paints in the United States. In 1949, Telma married painter and photographer Edilson Cordeiro da Rocha. In the 1950s, she took over her father’s studio, which, for a short time, was called Photo Saraiva. She improved her photograph painting techniques during this period.  “After getting married, I started taking photographs professionally. I liked to make the clothes, do the makeup, arrange the lace and satin, imitating everything. I have photos of myself that I took when I was just a girl. I started by taking photographs in the open, not really in the studio. My father didn’t have the patience to photograph children. By then I had a Rolleiflex camera and had already taken photos of my boys, so I started photographing children in the garden, which was very beautiful,” she says.

The painted photographic portrait is part of the northeastern imaginary; it is the foundation of the region’s affective memory. The technique of transforming a black and white photograph into a colored image using oil paints, pastels or watercolor is a subversion of the classic portrait, in a popularization of the representation of the face, uniting photography and painting. The portrait artists would travel from town to town, going to markets and people’s homes and producing an important iconography of this region. For many years, these works were found on display in different family homes – using elaborate or simple techniques, in ornate or simple frames. With the arrival of Photoshop and the practicality of digital technology, the laborious technique of photopainting rapidly began to lose ground. 

In terms of technique, Telma always sought to research and use good materials in her work. With the support of Salviano, fluent in English, she manage to import rare papers and paints into Brazil, which guaranteed the durability and excellence of her work. She used photographic papers such as Ektalure and Kodabromide, from Kodak, ideal for absorbing paints. She also worked with photographic enlargements, adapting them to the photopaintings, modifying details of clothes and backgrounds to create new compositions. She used midformat Kiev and Pentax cameras as well as the old Zorki, using Fuji and Kodak for black and white photos and adjusting the formula and temperature of the developer fluid for the grainier papers she liked to use. The artist created custom backgrounds for the photographs, painting panels in lilac, green and blue.

Telma’s photopainting technique stands out for the sophistication of nuances: she used very thin custom brushes to add the minutest details to strands of hair, eyebrows and nails; and used cardboard, crepe paper and other materials to create stencils, adding subtle finishes, such as on the sleeves of the clothes. Telma also restored photographs, using lightening and painting techniques to revitalize faded or damaged images. However, her technique did not overwhelm the performativity of the whole process, from the costume and composition of the subject to their makeup. She worked on every stage of the process of conceiving the image, from concept to production.

Mother of five children – Roberto, Ricardo, Edilma, Edilson Filho and Ernesto – Telma stood out not only as a photography professional, but also as an artist who reinvented the image through fiction. With mastery and curiosity, she created a universe of her own, deeply influenced by the movies. The furniture of the artist’s house was designed by her based on movie references and made by a local carpenter – like in her daughter Edilma’s bedroom, with furniture inspired by scenarios from the movie Mary Antoinette (1938), directed by W. S. Van Dyke.

Edilma says that by the mid-1950s, their house had transcended the function of home, becoming the living scenario of Telma’s professional and artistic practice – a symbolic space that embraced the dreams and joyful moments of generations. Even though the terrace was small, it was transformed into a studio, in which truly photographic rituals took place. The sitting room and pantry chairs were rearranged to accommodate long lines of clients – many of them coming from other cities – especially on graduation photo days. The flow of clients was intense: groups of young people arrived by public transport to have their portraits taken. The door of the house was held ajar by a panel and a latch, and the recurring question “Telma, is my portrait ready?” echoed through the rooms of the house, marking the rhythm of a daily life full of affection and creation. Over the years, Telma’s home consolidated itself as a symbol of the region’s family history and photographic memory. The house was home to Telma and her parents, Júlio and Mirou, her brother, her children and, later, even her grandchildren. It was a full and busy house, where photography was not only a craft, but a daily experience.

The iconic residence on Tristão Gonçalves street in the center of Crato is now occupied by the Museu Orgânico Casa de Telma Saraiva [Telma Saraiva House Organic Museum], which houses different collections, as well as a photographic studio. However, what draws the most attention are the painted portraits – ritual images formed by the desire to create new worlds, which began in the movie theater and resonated throughout the artist’s life.

A set of thirty self-portraits produced from the late 1940s covers one of the most special walls in the museum. There, Telma can be seen dressed as different characters, incorporating her fascination with the divas of Hollywood cinema. These images can also be understood as film frames: the choreography of poses directly refers to the cinematographic gesture, to the narrative mechanisms that the artist already dominated, appropriating the performance.

“That’s where my love for photography began,” she says. “I took portraits of myself with the mirror: I would place someone there, focused, got everything ready and then I would take the person’s place and tell them to just press the shutter button. Sometimes I used the manual shutter, sometimes I used the timer – because more modern cameras were already becoming available.”

And so a contemporary process, unprecedented in Ceará and Brazilian art, was born on the Araripe plateau, in Cratinho de Açúcar, during the 1940s. The Cariri region now has a precious collection that tells part of this story.

With the support of the Cariri Cultural Center and the Museum of Image and Sound of Ceará, Telma Saraiva’s entire photographic collection has been digitized, including her painted photographs, black and white and color photos, slides and 3 × 4 portraits. The museum, kept and coordinated by Ernesto Rocha in collaboration with the Saraiva Leão family, was inaugurated in 2021, with the support of Sesc [an organization that provides cultural and social services to traders, their families and the general public.].

Telma’s collection includes the photos left by clients, as well as her furniture, costumes and studio, which are preserved; but above all, what stands out are the precious albums she put together for each of her children, religiously recording the different stages in their lives. In Ernesto’s album, for example, she photographed him every month on the anniversary of the day of his birth, establishing the practice of the monthly birthday, today so banalized. The albums depicting Edilma, her only daughter, are distinguished by their technical sophistication, with complete series of photographs fully painted. On viewing these files, one of the great surprises was to discover Telma’s passion for Carnival: she organized parades and designed creative costumes. However, perhaps it is not surprising that the artist never ceased to invent new worlds in different ways. ///

TELMA SARAIVA (Crato, CE, 1928-2015) was a photographer and painter. Exhibitions of her work include Telma Saraiva e a fascinação do mundo, at the Rio Art Museum (MAR), Raio-que-o-parta: ficções do moderno no Brasil [Get Lost: Fictions of the Modern in Brazil, 2022], at Sesc 24 de Maio, in São Paulo, and Telma Saraiva: artífice da imagem, at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Ceará.

BITU CASSUNDÉ (Várzea Alegre, CE, 1974) is a curator, researcher, and educator. He curated the exhibitions Telma Saraiva e a fascinação do mundo [Telma Saraiva and the Fascination of the World, 2025], at the Rio Art Museum (MAR), and Telma Saraiva: artífice da imagem [Telma Saraiva: Creator of the Image, 2018], at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Ceará (MACCE), among others. He is the heritage and memory manager at the Sérvulo Esmeraldo Cariri Cultural Center (CCCARIRI).

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