E004
On the occasion of MIA Photo Fair 2026, Brasiliae PAESAGGIO CORPO MATERIA, the curatorial project born from the collaboration between ORMA and CHROMA, presents a focus dedicated to contemporary Brazilian photography, highlighting its narrative power, layered identities, and the constant tension between document and imagination. The aim is to offer the Italian public a broad and thoughtful perspective, in which Brazil emerges as a visual and symbolic space capable of addressing the environmental, social, and cultural transformations of our time.
At the heart of the project is the first presentation in Italy of key artists such as Araquém Alcântara, Claudio Edinger, and Gleeson Paulino: three generations in dialogue, united by a profound reflection on Brazilian identity and on the construction of the image as a critical space. Alongside them, Vincent Rosenblatt investigates the cultural and social dynamics of contemporary Brazil, while Betina Samaia and Alessandro Fracta develop research that moves across landscape, memory, and processes of identification, expanding the dialogue between the individual and the collective dimension. Together, these artists offer a vital and multifaceted panorama, in which photography becomes a tool for reflection, experimentation, and powerful visual construction.
Araquém Alcântara, a central figure in Brazilian environmental photography, has pursued for over thirty years a rigorous investigation into the relationship between landscape, culture, and ecological awareness. With the project Terra Brasil, he constructs a complex and layered portrait of the country, where the beauty of biodiversity is intertwined with the responsibility of preservation, transforming the image into an ethical as well as poetic gesture.
Claudio Edinger, one of the most internationally acclaimed Brazilian photographers, has developed a distinctive visual language based on the use of large format and selective focus. After two decades in New York and landmark publications such as Chelsea Hotel and Venice Beach, his return to Brazil—particularly in the series De Bom Jesus a Milagres—has resulted in a contemplative investigation of the sertão, where perception and memory redefine the landscape as a mental space even before a geographical one.
Gleeson Paulino represents one of the most compelling voices of the new generation. His practice intertwines autobiography, spirituality, and territory, translating personal experience into a universal symbolic dimension. In Batismo, an internationally awarded project, water becomes a metaphor for transformation and rebirth, opening the everyday to a mythical dimension that connects intimacy and collectivity.
Through this dialogue between established masters and new perspectives, the project does not simply present individual practices, but constructs a choral narrative capable of bridging a geographical and cultural distance, offering the Italian public a unique opportunity to engage with one of the most dynamic and significant photographic contexts of the contemporary scene.