… at the heart of silence is the synthesis of the cry of pain
Since early in his career in photography, Walter Firmo has incorporated the notion of the narrative synthesis of a single image, constructed by mounting, directing and frequently staging the scene. From his early days as a photographer, he has challenged and questioned the canons and limits of documentary photography and photojournalism. In a broader sense, he questions photography itself as the mimesis of the real, incorporating into his work new creative, specific and conceptual approaches which value and exalt the object and theme of greatest interest to him in his artistic journey: the representation and visualization of Brazil’s black population.
Walter Firmo was born and raised in the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro, the only child of migrants from the state of Pará in the north of Brazil. His father came from a black family living on the banks of the lower Amazon, while his mother, born in the city of Belém, came from a white family of Portuguese descent. Since his childhood and adolescence, he has constructed the poetics of his gaze with a focus primarily on producing a broad and generous record of the black population of Rio de Janeiro and the rest of Brazil – their daily lives, their warmth, their religious faith and their celebrations. His work is a true ode to the integrity, pride and resilience of this population and its many cultural manifestations.
In a unique and experimental process to build and define his visual language, he established a direct and innovative dialog with our landscape, population and light in the early 1960s – tropical and transatlantic, rural and urban, sensual and ecstatic. Over the years, his photography has emerged from a true open-air studio, where color is not just his central theme, but a color that reveals Brazil’s black population through both the chromatic intensity of his colorful images and his powerful black and white photographs – most of which are being seen for the first time in this exhibition. Firmo has built an authorial practice that is creative and engaged, focused on all those who are descendants of the violent African diaspora that inescapably marks and molds the past, present and future of this country, weaving and composing “at the heart of silence is the synthesis of the cry of pain.”
Blackness and enchantment, narrative and experimentation. It is these elements that support the multiple poetics that give meaning and place to Walter Firmo’s work.
Born in Rio de Janeiro, descendant of Amazonians, Bahian in spirit, Black and Brazilian by both definition and conviction, in this exhibition Walter Firmo shows us his dense and critical work, an oeuvre that he has built, without interruption, over 70 years, establishing a powerful presence in both the press and authorial photography and resulting in a vast collection of more than 140,000 images, now safeguarded on permanent loan to the Instituto Moreira Salles. The exhibition, initially organized and presented by IMS, in São Paulo, and later shown in Rio de Janeiro, Brasília and Belo Horizonte, now arrives in Salvador through the generous support and partnership of the Museum of Modern Art of Bahia.
Sergio Burgi, Curator
Janaina Damaceno Gomes, Assistant Curator