Brasil by kristin capp
BRASIL is a photobook project that is the result of eight years of photographing culture, landscape, architecture and the visual magic I found in Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo and Salvador de Bahia. Made on analog film, the photographs are personal portraits that illuminate a fluid, syncopated, and complex contemporary Brazil, seen through the lens of my Rolleiflex camera.
BACKGROUND
I first traveled to Brazil to shoot stills for a documentary film on Capoeira in Salvador de Bahia. Moved by the energy of the African diaspora in Bahia, I was compelled to return to different regions of Brazil to shoot in both urban and rural locations. I lived in Rio de Janeiro and worked obsessively: photographing on back streets, on the beaches at night, and was especially drawn to the striking modernist architecture in Rio and Sao Paulo. A three-month artist residency at the Sacatar Foundation on the island of Itaparica in Bahia was a turning point in my life and work. I discovered that the work was expanding and would eventually take the form of a book.
THE WORK
After photographing for eight years in Brazil, the work is tightly edited and is ready to publish. Shot entirely on film with my Rolleiflex medium format camera, the silver prints made in the darkroom are already scanned, and the layout and design nearly complete. Selections of this work from Brazil have been exhibited at the National Art Gallery of Namibia, Windhoek; the Goethe Center in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil; the Bursa PhotoFestival, Turkey; Galerie Photo4, Paris, and Galeria Eduardo Fernandes, Sao Paulo. Many images in the book are in private and public collections in the United States, Brazil and in Europe.
