Specters of brazilian history in the early photographic work of Mario Cravo Neto

Abstract

Mario Cravo Neto is one of the most important contemporary photographers in Brazil. His works show a complex marriage of aesthetic lyricism, sculptural monumentality, and afro-Brazilian themes. In this paper, I am interested in comparisons that have been resisted by other scholars of Cravo Neto’s work. Particularly, I focus on the way his photographs work against the documentary and ethnographic tradition in Brazil. By looking at a series of earlier works by Cravo Neto, I will argue that the legacy of the Black Atlantic archive is an undercurrent in the artist’s work that at times transpires in eloquent ways.