The visual production of photographer and filmmaker Miguel Rio Branco (b. 1946), who is from the Canary Islands, includes multimedia installations. He studied at the New York Institute of Photography (1966), working in the city as a photographer and film director from 1970 to 1972. In the eighties, he made short films, some of them poetic documentaries that address social issues. Rio Branco would eventually come to be seen as one of the best photojournalists working in color. He and two colleagues were awarded the Prix Kodak de la Critique Photographique in Paris in 1982. He currently lives and works in Rio de Janeiro.
In the late seventies and eighties, the magazine Módulo, which was founded in the fifties by architect Oscar Niemeyer (1907–2012), became an important vehicle of reflection on art as well as a major source of support for the “Geração 80.”
Articles published on Rio Branco’s work from the eighties include “Miguel Rio Branco: bons tiros na hora certa” by Ligia Canongia published in Módulo [doc. no. 1110965], and “Fotografia: Miguel Rio Branco: aproximações” by Wilson Coutinho, which places emphasis on “the banal” and “color,” two fundamental aspects of Rio Branco’s production [doc. no. 1110964].