This essay is on the production of contemporary Brazilian photography that marked the first half of the twentieth century in Brazil as a continuation of artistic modernism and its ties to issues of identity as the register of the human landscape. Little by little in the mid-1970s these heartfelt issues within the country began to fade away, yielding to the search for a new romanticized national  “characterization” derived from artistic works, that in a way, sought to “negate the possibility of characterizing Brazilians as social and individual beings.” Many artists working in various art forms extensively illustrated the process of “erasing” or “destroying individuality in a mass society.”. The author, Tadeu Chiarelli, detected these traits to be common among the photographers of the period, as they systematically refused to accept “the objective” as the starting point of artistic creativity and used photography conventionally or “autonomously.” Such works not only illustrated the loss of identity of the individual but also that of the artistic work itself.

This essay was written for the exhibition catalogue “Sobre a fotografia brasileira atual” of the exhibition with the same title that was organized in 1997 by the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo. Shortly thereafter, it was exhibited at the Centro Cultural Lightin Rio de Janeiro. This drew attention to the importance of appropriation photography and to matters related to national and individual identity in contemporary Brazilian art production .

Tadeu Chiarelli is a curator and the current director of the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo. He has also worked as a researcher and curator in the fields of photography and nineteenth- and twentieth-century Brazilian art. His work identified how art and photography are connected to the artistic world and its circuits, with an emphasis on social issues. He has played a fundamental role in the understanding and promotion of photography as key elements in Brazilian art production in recent decades.

[As complementary reading see the ICAA digital archive for the following texts by Tadeu Chiarelli: “15 artistas brasileiros: colocando dobradiças na arte contemporânea” (doc. no. 1110500), “Amanhã hoje: Casa triângulo de 1988 a 1995” (doc. no. 1111344), “Apontamentos para um mapa das artes plásticas em São Paulo durante 1985” (doc. no. 1111351), “Apropriações: o lugar da arte como questão” (doc. no. 1111252), “Armadilhas para Narciso” (doc. no. 1111253), “Considerações sobre o uso de imagens de segunda geração na arte contemporânea” (doc. no. 1110502), “Da arte nacional brasileira para a arte brasileira internacional” (doc. no. 1075144), “Emmanuel Nassar: erudito e popular” (doc. no. 1110457), “Fotografía en Brasil: años 90 = Photography in Brazil in the 1990s” (doc. no. 1110894),  “A gravura no espelho” (doc. no. 1111250), “A gravura paulista significa” (doc. no. 1111251), “Jac Leirner” (doc. no. 1111254), “La mirada contaminada: otras fotografías = The contaminated gaze: other photographies” (doc. no. 1110893), “Realidade e simulacro” (doc. no. 1111255), “Uma realidade... dilacerante: a produção de Nazareth Pacheco = Nazareth Pacheco’s output: a lacerating reality” (doc. no. 1111059), “Sobre as pinturas de Mônica Nador” (doc. no. 1111256), and “O tridimensional na arte brasileira dos anos 80 e 90: genealogias, superações” (doc. no. 1111352)].