Miguel Rio Branco, figurehead of contemporary creation in Brazil

Miguel Rio Branco: Salvador de Bahia, 1979 © Miguel Rio Branco / Magnum Photos

Text by: Sarah Tisseyre

3 min

He is a polymorphic artist, painter, filmmaker and photographer, known for his work with color.

In Paris, at the BAL, an independent platform dedicated to the contemporary image in all its forms, Miguel Rio Branco, 73, exhibits a hundred of his photographs, taken in his early days, in the years 1970-80 in New York, Mexico. , and especially in the Brazilian northeast.

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It was in 1968 that Miguel Rio Branco, son of a Brazilian diplomat, passed through the Institute of Photography in New York, set off to discover and photograph the land of his origins ... In the Northeast, he rubbed shoulders in the following years with emerald seekers, and immortalize the inhabitants of the insalubrious Pelourinho district in Salvador de Bahia, its prostitutes in particular ...

But not in a documentary process.

Although an associate member of the Magnum agency for 40 years, at Miguel Rio Branco, he is a painter who expresses himself, much more than a journalist.

The material of the photographed objects

What catches the eye, in his photos without caption, is first of all the work of color, for which he is known, often with a dominant: orange red in the room of this prostitute who is buttoning up her shorts, blue gray behind these capoeira dancers ...

And then there is this care taken in the composition, the framing, these close-up shots of body fragments, this desire to bring out the texture, the material of the objects photographed, scars on a bare back;

decayed facades;

milk spilled on tar, in black and white.

So much so that each of his prints is like a painting made in photography.

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