Miguel Rio Branco and the Curse of Cities (Maldicidades 2014)

Abstract

This essay will discuss the book Maldicidade (2014) by the Spanish-Brazilian photographer Miguel Rio Branco with a special attention to its organization as a narrative and poetic unity as a photobook. In focus is the book’s composition as an implicit dialogue between text and image and the use of modernist avantgarde techniques of montage and collage aiming at the expression of a contemporary reality of misery and hardship in the big cities of the Americas. The overarching argument is that the unity of the book as a photobook surpasses the referential nature of photography through visual narrativity in the effort to reveal the common condition of its posthuman urbanity.

Keywords

• Miguel Rio Branco
• photobook
• poetic of composition