Outside of the box.

MIGUEL RIO BRANCO: OUT OF NOWHERE

GRONINGER MUSEUM 

GRONINGEN, THE NETHERLANDS

SEPTEMBER 17-DECEMBER 3, 2006

Miguel de Silva Paranhos do Rio Branco was born the son of a diplomat in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria, Spain, in 1946. He was educated in political science and painting before studying photography and filmmaking in New York City and Rio de Janeiro from the late 1960s to the mid-1970s. His work as a photojournalist and documentary filmmaker working both in black and white and later nearly exclusively in color brought him to the attention of Magnum Photos, for which he became a correspondent in 1980. Painting and social concerns have greatly influenced his approach to photography and mark every aspect of his work. The retrospective, "Out of Nowhere," now on display at the Groninger Museum in the Netherlands, is the culmination of almost forty years of his work in painting, films, slide shows, still photographs, and installations. It is a tour de force through Rio Branco's vision.

The title of this remarkable retrospective comes from Rio Branco's early 1990s-era photographic series, "Out of Nowhere," based on work made at the Santa Rosa Boxing Academy in an old section of Rio de Janeiro. The boxers, epic and fleshy, are recorded in intense color contrasted with stark shadows. They flail at one another in ritual violence; the blood is redder than red, the other colors, blue and yellow, are equally primary. Black skin merges with black shadows and the fist is a flash of light. Essayist David Levi-Strauss, son of cultural anthropologist Claude Levi Strauss, likens the imagery to baroque depictions of saints, notably of Santa Rosa, also known as the Rosa of Lima, the first New World saint who practiced a rigorous, masochistic devotion that included flagellating herself, sleeping on bricks, and gouging herself with glass. The extravagant and very personal presentation of ritual violence and tropical color sets the work of Rio Branco apart from that of his colleagues at Magnum who also share an interest in the tropics and favor the use of intense color, most notably David Alan Harvey and Alex Webb.

The exhibition consists of nine installations that fill the ground floor of the museum, not in chronological order but rather in a Borgesian labyrinth that leads back into itself, forcing the viewer through new gardens of forking paths filled with multiple slide shows, such as "Out of Nowhere" and "Between the Eyes," that replay many of his famous still images from the streets, bars, and bordellos of Brazil. "Blue Tango" is Rio Branco's homage to Capoeira, the Brazilian fighting dance that is itself a carry-over from African slaves' resistance to Portugese hegemony in Brazil. Boys dance silhouetted against blue walls in an almost erotic ballet. "Shark Piece," a Candomble-accented installation where the visitor is surrounded by images of sharks on a blue scrim, also ensorcell the viewer. Other works depict stylized rituals of everyday interactions--ordinary people, prostitutes, school kids, gangsters, and others meeting on the streets, at the slaughterhouses, and in alleyways of favelas. "Barro" (Mud), is a gridded installation of traditional prints showing details of baroque paintings, blood, naked torsos and body parts, and nursing mothers, among other references symbolizing the creation of man. The work is beautiful and intense. Other images combine the sexual or the violent in an energy of primary colors and sharp chiaroscuro.

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As much as is suggested and depicted in these photographs, the total impact lies outside of the frames of the images. Indeed, Rio Branco's work is completely out of the box. His photography and "photojournalism" do not fit comfortably within the confines of a picture story, book (and he is the author of more than fifteen books), film, or even an entity such as Magnum itself.

Rio Branco is his work: growing, changing, evolving, and blending bits and pieces of history, painting, contemporary culture, and photography. Like Os Mutantes, the seminal Brazilian psychedelic rock band of the mid-1960s, Rio Branco has created a mutant art form that is evocative and defies every attempt to pin it down with easy definitions. After exploring his installations and traveling down the exhibit's refolding, ever-forking paths, it is impossible to see the same picture twice in the same context. Every time one turns around a new constellation of images, previously seen or unseen, strikes the viewer like a quick fist from out of nowhere right between the eyes; it is like being struck with the force of imagination itself.

"OUT OF NOWHERE" WAS ACCOMPANIED BY THE EXHIBITION "DISLECSIA" (ON VIEW SEPTEMBER 17-NOVEMBER 12) AT THE NEARBY NOORDERLICHT GALLERY, FEATURING MORE THAN ONE HUNDRED PHOTOGRAPHS INCLUDING MUCH OF RIO BRANCO'S EARLY AND PREVIOUSLY UNSEEN BLACK-AND-WHITE WORK FROM THE 1960s.

BILL KOUWENHOVEN is a writer and photographer currently living and working in Berlin and New York City.