Miguel Rio Branco

Miguel Rio Branco (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain, 1946)

Miguel Rio Branco is a photographer, cinematographer, and painter. The son of a diplomat, Miguel da Silva Paranhos de Rio Branco spent his childhood and adolescence between Spain, Portugal, Brazil, Switzerland, and the United States. A self-taught painter, he held his first exhibition in 1964 at a gallery in Bern, Switzerland. In 1966, he studied at the New York Institute of Photography and, two years later, at the Escola Superior de Desenho Industrial (Esdi) in Rio de Janeiro. Between 1969 and 1981, he directed experimental films and worked as a cinematographer and cameraman for filmmakers such as Gilberto Loureiro (1947) and Júlio Bressane (1946). Concurrently, he pursued documentary photography. From 1978 to 1982, he was a correspondent for Magnum Agency in Paris, standing out for his use of saturated colors in his work.

In the 1980s, he began creating audiovisual installations that integrated photography, painting, and cinema, frequently exhibiting in Brazil and internationally. He has received numerous awards, including the Kodak Photographic Critique Prize in 1982, the Vitae Foundation Arts Grant in 1994, and the Funarte National Photography Prize in 1995. He is the author of the books Dulce Sudor Amargo (1985), Nakta (1986), Miguel Rio Branco (1998), Silent Book (1998), and Entre Olhos o Deserto (2001).

Critical Commentary

Miguel Rio Branco has dedicated himself to experimental cinema and photography since the 1970s. Known for his work with color, he explores chromatic contrasts, the blurring of contours, the interplay of mirroring, and diverse textures in his photographs, creating atmospheres through the use of color and light. The passage of time, violence, sensuality, and death are constant themes.

In the series Pelourinho (1979), Miguel Rio Branco photographs Maciel, the oldest part of the Pelourinho neighborhood in Salvador, Bahia, a highly degraded area linked to prostitution. He photographs people with faces in shadows and bodies marked by scars, and is also interested in houses ruined by time. He captures what remains of dignity in the local's everyday situations, in environments beset by violence and solitude.

In installations created in the 1990s, he displays photographic projections alongside newspaper clippings, shards of mirror, or scraps of fabric. The viewer thus journeys through a fragmented world composed of dramatic images. Using resources such as transparencies, juxtapositions, cuts, and collages, Miguel Rio Branco creates situations of continuity and discontinuity. For some critics, his work lies at the boundary between art, photography, and cinema.