Marcel Giró

FOTOCLUBISMO
Brazilian Modernist Photography and the Foto-Cine Clube Bandeirante 1946-1964

Sarah Hermanson Meister.
The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Now more than 175 years after photography’s invention, it is rare to discover a significant chapter of its history that is essentially unknown to European and North American audiences. São Paulo’s Foto-Cine Clube Bandeirante (FCCB) is widely heralded in Brazil, but almost invisible to photography enthusiasts elsewhere. Historically their achievements were well known to the international circuit of salons in which they participated, including Otto Steinert and his fellow “Subjective” photographers in Germany and the Société Française de la Photographie in Paris. Nonetheless, to date not a single American institution owns vintage photographs by anyone other than Geraldo de Barros.

Published to accompany an exhibition at the MoMA, this publication assembles a robust selection of photographs to introduce the FCCB’s ground-breaking photographic experiments to a wider audience. Six thematic chapters highlight individual achievements as well as the breadth of the club’s membership, transforming the history of photography as we know it and connecting with contemporary Brazilian painting and São Paulo’s then-newly-formed museums of modern art. This is the first non-Portuguese language publication to grapple with these photographs.