Open AccessMiguel Rio Branco and the Curse of Cities (Maldicidades 2014)
Author(s) -
Karl Erik Schøllhammer
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
matlit
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2182-8830
DOI - 10.14195/2182-8830_9-1_6
Subject(s) - narrativity , urbanity , narrative , poetry , argument (complex analysis) , art , expression (computer science) , curse , focus (optics) , mainstream , aesthetics , literature , history , sociology , philosophy , anthropology , biochemistry , chemistry , civil engineering , physics , optics , theology , computer science , engineering , programming language
This essay will discuss the book Maldicidade (2014) by the Spanish-Brazilian photographer Miguel Rio Branco with a special attention to its organization as a narrative and poetic unity as a photobook. In focus is the book’s composition as an implicit dialogue between text and image and the use of modernist avantgarde techniques of montage and collage aiming at the expression of a contemporary reality of misery and hardship in the big cities of the Americas. The overarching argument is that the unity of the book as a photobook surpasses the referential nature of photography through visual narrativity in the effort to reveal the common condition of its posthuman urbanity.