On the occasion of the XI Salão Arte-Pará held in 1992, Paulo Herkenhoff provides an overview of photography from the Equator region of northern Brazil. He compares the production from the state of Pará and its capital city Belém to that of the state of Amazonas and its capital city Manaus. He concludes that the former has a more anthropological bent while the latter a more phenomenological view of the entire Amazon region, which Herkenhoff considers a positive point. In terms of visual art from the state of Pará, Herkenhoff praises its photography in particular, which he considers proportionally the most significant in Brazil. Due to its quality and energy, photography from Pará has made an impact on institutional and social spheres. Herkenhoff cites examples of important works and figures, among them Miguel Chikaoka, who played an important role as an educator and artist. In conclusion, Herkenhoff asserts that photographers from Belém have come to understand that the unique nature of their aesthetics does not lie in the themes they address, but instead in their extremely dynamic position as “subjects of language in action.” 

This text was featured in the catalogue for the exhibition XI Salão Arte-Pará, an annual event in the eighties and nineties that energized visual production from the state of Pará. For a full chronology of the events held during those years, see http://www.fotoparaense80-90.pa.gov.br/crono_para.htm. As a figure active in Rio and São Paulo—the centers of the Brazilian art scene—Herkenhoff, chief curator of the exhibition, was key to gaining nationwide recognition for photography from the state of Pará in the eighties and nineties.

Paulo Herkenhoff (b. 1949) is an internationally known art critic and curator. He was the curator of the 1998 São Paulo Biennial. His career began in 1975 at the Project Room of the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro (MAM-Rio), a venue central to the avant-garde art scene of that city. The exhibition Exposição de Arte that Herkenoff organized for MAM-Rio’s Project Room in 1975, registered certain developments in performance. For further information, see “Exposição da arte” [doc. no. 1110618] and the essay “Brasil (es) = Brazil(s)” [doc. no. 1075090], published in the Madrid-based magazine Lápiz in 1997. That second text demonstrates the concerns and concepts underlying “Universalis,” Herkenhoff’s curatorial project for the XXIV São Paulo Biennial (1998); in it, the author attempts to comprehend his country in relation to the unique and the multiple.

For information on photography in other Brazilian states, such as Paraná (and its capital Curitiba) (1), see by Rubens Fernandes Júnior “Militância Política e Dissonância Poética” [doc. no. 1111168] (1). See as well the essay by Orlando Maneschy on photographers Gratuliano Bibas and North American Charles DeForest Fredricks, also in the state of Pará [doc. no. 1111171].