From the streets to intimacy. From the urban context to natural landscapes. The accident and the affirmation of photography. Photographing his family was a habit throughout Cravo Neto’s life, present from the beginning of his journey until the end. On 31 March 1975, Mario Cravo Neto suffered a car accident that kept him in bed for almost a year. Many people see his recovery period, when he was unable to move, as a turning point toward photography and toward a type of enacting in the studio that would be cemented by the ensuing portraits against an infinity cove. The video Light and Shadow, made while he was still in the hospital, is a hallmark of this introspective turn – a turn that would unfold magisterially in the following series, produced in Denmark.
—L.C.O.