CARNAVAL
(Salvador da Bahia) (BOOK)

Photographs by Valdir Cruz

NOVEMBER 3 - DECEMBER 31, 2005

Throckmorton Fine Art is pleased to announce our upcoming exhibition, CARNAVAL (Salvador da Bahia). In what will be the third exhibition of photographic works presented at the gallery by Brazilian photographer, Valdir Cruz, this tremendous body of work represents 10 years of attentive effort. The result, a breathtaking series of images of Carnival as Mr. Cruz has come to know it.

The first Capital of Brazil and its musical heartbeat, the port city of Salvador da Bahia was central to the Portuguese trade in slaves and sugar. Acknowledging that heritage, Bahia is today the center of African culture in the Americas. With the largest concentration of residents of African descent in Brazil, Bahia is renowned for its percussive, street oriented celebration of Carnival that in Brazil descends from a rowdy Portuguese festival that anticipates the fasting and self-denial of the season of Lent. By mid-19th century Rio de Janeiro was host to the masquerade balls and parades with bands and horse-drawn floats, eventually enlivened b y the introduction of samba by African Brazilians, mostly from Bahia. With it its spectacular floats, parades, and photogenic costumes, RIo's festival has become a fully choreographed, global spectacle, while that of Salvador da Bahia remains a carnival of the people, now numbering in the millions.

Cruz flows with the revelers, between the upper city and the lower, carrying a Leica and a Nikon, setting aperture and shutter speed as he goes. He is comfortable among the people. Couples dance, transvestites preen, and in a quiet pocket in the midst of the early hours of Carnival, shirtless in the near Equatorial summer heat, a few men play dominos. These portraits are taken as they are offered, and rolling with the percussive rhythms of Africa, celebrates this magnificent spectacle. He captures the infectious joy, dazzling radiance, and epic experience that is Carnival.

Although Brazilian photographer Valdir Cruz has lived in the United States for more than twenty years, much of his work in photography has focused on the people, architecture, and landscape of Brazil. In 1994, he started photographing FACES OF THE RAINFOREST, an ongoing project documenting the life of indigenous people in the Brazilian Rainforest, for which he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1996. His publications include CATEDRAL BASILICA DE NOSSA SENHORA DA LUZ DOS PINHAIS (Brave Wolf Publishing, 1996), Patrick Tierney's acclaimed DARKNESS IN EL DORADO (W.W. Norton, 2000), FACES OF THE RAINFOREST - THE YANOMAMI (powerHouse, 2002), with the support of a publication subvention awarded by Guggenheim Foundation in 2000, and FACES DA FLORESTA - OS YANOMAMI (Cosac & Naify, 2004). His newest book, O Camino das Águas, is forthcoming. Cruz is represented in the permanent collections of the Museu de Arte de São Paulo, The Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and the Smithsonian Institution, among others. Cruz lives in New York City.