I'm excited to present my research on Brazilian postwar photography. My paper, "Bandeirante photographers in global context: Brazilian participation in FIAP, 1950–1965" is included in the program of the conference In Black and White: Photography, Race, and the Modern Impulse in Brazil at Midcentury.
The conference takes place at the Martin E. Segal Theater, The Graduate Center, City University of New York (365 Fifth Avenue), May 3, 2017. It is organized by Abigail Lapin Dardashti, Museum Research Consortium Fellow, MoMA and Ph.D. Candidate, CUNY, and Sarah Hermanson Meister, Curator, Department of Photography, Museum of Modern Art.
My paper "Bandeirante photographers in global context: Brazilian participation in FIAP, 1950–1965" focuses on the Brazilian photographers associated with the São Paulo-based photo club, Foto Cine Clube Bandeirante, and its participation in the work of FIAP (International Federation of Photographic Art). The extended abstract and some of the images discussed in the paper are available here.
My paper is part of the panel "International Photographic Networks in Brazil and Beyond." The panel is moderated by Claudia Calirman (John Jay College, CUNY), and the co-panelists are Lucas Menezes (Université Paris 1—Panthéon Sorbonne, Paris), Marly Porto (Universidade de São Paulo), and Marcio Siwi (New York University).
This panel is scheduled to take place on May 3, 2017 from 9:45am to 11:45am.
The conference is free and open to the public. Everyone is welcome!
I would like to thank Abigail Lapin Dardashti for inviting me to participate in the conference and for helping me get access to the MASP—FCCB book which is crucial to this paper and my further research. I wish to thank my fellow Ph.D. candidates at the Graduate Center, Gillian Sneed and Luisa Valle, who patiently taught me Brazilian Portuguese pronunciation of the artists’ names, and Danielle Stewart, who generously shared her knowledge of FCCB and the cultural context of São Paulo of the 1950s.
More about the conference from the organizers:
“This initiative investigates Brazilian modernist photography, its relationship to race, and its place within a dynamic international network of images and ideas. From experimental work that resonates with broader postwar trends of creative photographic expression to modern forms with local and sometimes ethnic inflections, photographers were instrumental in formulating new visual languages in Brazil. Since 1939, the São Paulo-based Foto Cine Clube Bandeirante (FCCB) nurtured a wide range of avant-garde practices that anticipated many elements of Concrete Art in Brazil featured at the first São Paulo Biennial in 1951. This diverse group included photographers from immigrant communities such as São Paulo’s growing German, Hungarian, Jewish, Italian, and Japanese populations. These artists participated in international networks of exchange around the globe that increased their visibility and expanded their approach.
Taking FCCB as a starting point, the conference stretches the boundaries of what we understand as experimental art in Brazil in the mid-twentieth century. Photography has been largely excluded from current scholarship about Brazilian modernism and abstraction, and Brazilian photographers of this era are overlooked in narratives around modern photography. ”