The Maison de l’Amérique Latine in partnership with the Instituto Moreira Salles, dedicates an exhibition toJosé Medeiros, one of the great figures of Brazilian photography in the 1940s and 1950s. This retrospective retraces his career in 180 photographs and 50 documents and permits an assessment of the significance of his work and an appreciation of the diversity of the themes that he addressed.
Born in 1921 at Térésina, in the Nordeste of Brazil, and dying in Italy in 1990, José Medeiros was incontestably one of the masters of Brazilian photojournalism in the 20th century. His work encompasses nearly 20,000 images preserved in the Instituto Moreira Salles at Rio de Janeiro, displays the “Rio Bossa Nova” of the 1940s and 1950s; its urban landscapes, beaches, palaces, festivals and symbolic characters. José Medeiros also knew how to celebrate daily life, the popular festivals and traditions of the Nordeste and unusual aspects of Afro-Brazilian culture. He was also one of the first people to photograph the Indian populations of the Amazon. According to the film-maker Glauber Rocha, José Medeiros was the only person who knew how to translate the Brazilian light.
José Medeiros began early with photography. His father was an amateur photographer, and taught him the techniques of laboratory development when he was only 12 years old. At the age of 18 he arrived in Rio and set up a studio in his apartment. It was while working for the review Rio that he made the acquaintance of the French photographer Jean Manzon, one of the founders, with Assis Chateaubriand, of O Cruzeiro. In 1946 Jean Manzon invited him to join the team of photographers for this new and prestigious review which, in its time, took an innovative and audacious look at Brazilian reality, favouring quality photography and unusual reportages. It introduced his readers to a multi-faceted Brazil, a reality until then concealed and unknown. José Medeiros worked for nearly 15 years for O Cruzeiro, producing significant reportages on the transformations of the country during the 1940s and 1950s.
A particularly innovative artist with a sensitive and dynamic view on the Brazilian society of his time, José Medeiros enabled documentary photography and photojournalism to acquire a separate status in Brazil. In parallel with this exhibition, from 5th October to 13th November, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie will present a set of photographs by José Medeiros on Candomblé initiation ceremony in Brazil.
These two exhibitions will be accompanied by a 240 page catalogue with 250 photographs, published by
éditions Hazan.
