ABOUT

The photographs of Miguel Rio Branco embody the richness, complexity, and sensuality of contemporary Latin America. The tension between morning and night, land and sea, women and men, pain and pleasure is subtly yet powerfully portrayed. Bullfighters, capoeiristas, boxers, and prostitutes are pictured, conveying an intense human passion. Rio Branco exposes the hidden and forbidden elements of his surround-ings, and illuminates the internal power of his subjects.

David Levi Strauss elucidates the world of Rio Branco, leading the reader deep into its mysteries. "In these images," he writes, "colors" become characters with their own histories, attributes, and roles to play. Color pushes up into an intensity that occurs only when light is dying or being born at dusk or dawn or any other time these extrem-ities are induced. [Rio Branco's] colors vibrate between mourning and exaltation." Miguel Rio Branco is a poignant and visceral portrait of heat, vitality, and diversity in life and in the landscape. It is the first comprehensive collection of his work to be published outside of Latin America.