About the event
Join us at The Museum of Modern Art for the first day of a two-day conference titled "In Black and White: Photography, Race, and the Modern Impulse in Brazil at Midcentury," which will explore Brazilian modernist photography, its relationship to race,
and its place within a dynamic international network of images and
ideas.
The Keynote Panel, moderated by Edward Sullivan from The Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, will feature Roberto Conduru (Rio de Janeiro State University), Helouise Costa (Museu de Arte Contemporânea, Universidade de São Paulo), Heloisa Espada (Instituto Moreira Salles, São Paulo), and Sarah Hermanson Meister (The Museum of Modern Art).
Admission to this lecture at MoMA is free, but RSVP is required. Click here to confirm your attendance.
On Wednesday, May 3, join us for the second day of the conference at The Graduate Center, CUNY. More information available here.
About the conference:
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.
This event will be livestreamed, click here to view.
Co-sponsored by The International Council at The Museum of Modern Art; and at The Graduate Center, City University of New York: the Institute for Research on the African Diaspora in the Americas and the Caribbean (IRADAC); Advanced Research Collaborative (ARC); the Rewald Endowment of the Ph.D. Program in Art History; Dominican Studies Group; the Feminist Studies Group; and the Postcolonial Studies Group; The Doctoral Students' Council (DSC).
