Rooted in documentary, concerned with social issues, the kids from Cia de Foto never sign their images individually. They always discuss as a group the themes, aesthetic issues and choices that arise in the course of a project. They can afford the luxury of this cohesiveness by taking on commissions, mainly in the communication and corporate sectors. The collective has worked on such in-depth subjects as an outdoor boxing club (now closed) under one of São Paulo’s ring road interchanges, or daily life on La Paulista, the main thoroughfare of Latin America’s economic and financial hub, with its vibrant, muted tones, complete with shards of glass and metal, and a white-collar population in shirt-sleeves, carrying attaché cases, alone in a sterile environment.
Avoiding clichés, the members of Cia de Foto may also decide to portray their megalopolis under the rain – simultaneously raising the issue of the floods that lingered for weeks in badly drained neighbourhoods. Cia de Foto always focuses on themes that address the human condition, its frailty, and the issues and risks related to images. Their involvement in this thought process has led to radical choices in subjects and the way they present them, exemplified in two remarkable videos they produced on their work. One is dedicated to a squat, shaped like a “vertical favela” in São Paulo’s historic centre, alternating slow-paced, subtle, beautifully dignified portraits with static shots in slow motion. The other video – their “shoebox” – brings together hundreds of family photos, with an emphasis on their infant children, at a frantic, happy, tender pace.
The series they are presenting at Photoquai – their vision of the Bahia carnival, the most photographed event in the country, and also the blackest and most clichéd – sums up their approach. They have retained only five images of the ecstatic crowd, conjuring up contemporary religious paintings in vibrant lighting. We do not know who actually took them. Just Cia de Foto.
Christian Caujolle, curator
Text from the catalogue-book “Photoquai”, co-edited by Musée du Quai Branly- Actes-Sud
