Born three years after the well-known Brazilian social-photographer, Sebastião Salgado who has had exhibitions in London over the past few years, it is a surprise that Mario Cravo Neto (1947-2009) has never had a solo exhibition here, even though he is considered to be one of the most important photographers in Brazil.  Autograph ABP have now corrected this in with an exhibition in the ground floor gallery of Rivington Place, the award-winning arts centre designed by David Adjaye, the rippling façade of which is inspired by a Sowei mask from Sierra Leone.

Two series of photographs show the quality and dexterity of his work – twenty photographs from “The Eternal Now” series from the 1980s and 1990s and another twenty colour prints from the “Laróyè” series from the 2000s.

The colour photographs record life in Salvador through the food, the flowers, the music, the sport, the children at play and the urban environment.  The black and white photographs, as is often the case, are the more powerful; they are timeless images of immense beauty with contrasting textures, light and shade, and the play of white and black, for example in the “Head of God”, while the young white fluffy chicks contrast with the wrinkled experienced hands in “Man with Bird Tears”, string is wrapped like lace round the serene face of “Luciana” and two large fish hang down over a man’s naked body with sea water running down his skin in “Man with Two Fish”.

‘My idea from now on is to develop that transition between the inert object and the sacred object. It is simply a religious position in photography that I wish to adopt.’   (Mario Cravo Neto)

On the second floor of Rivington Place are surreal postcard-perfect Alpine landscapes, in the foreground of which are images of native African sculptures and classical art works, often in black and white to emphasise the contrast.  Does the landscape symbolise the escape routes from countries occupied during the Second World War with the threat to people who did not match the Aryan ideals, not just Jews and homosexuals, but also those from other countries such as in Africa who also suffered under Hitler’s regime?

In her series “Syrcas”, Maud Sulter (1960- 2008) the artist, playright and curator of Scottish-Ghanaian descent draws attention to the suffering of black Europeans during the Holocaust, shown alongside the poem Blood Money (1994) describing the experience of a young African woman and her family in wartime living under the constant threat of discrimination, violence, persecution and, ultimately, death.

‘I felt that the piece should resemble something more like a diary. I’d been to see Anne Frank’s house and liked the diary, but I wanted something more direct, more visual, and, ultimately, more personal. Then I remembered sticking pictures into a scrap-book as a child, and I saw that this was the perfect way of juxtaposing images to present the historical problems surrounding the presence of black people in Germany.’  (Maud Sulter)

Images copyright from Autograph ABP and Daros Latinamerica Collection, Zürich. © Instituto Mario Cravo Neto / Instituto Moreira Salles