Considered one of the leading Brazilian photographers of the nineteenth century, Marc Ferrez (1843\u20131923) gained fame primarily for recording the landscape of his birth city, Rio de Janeiro. Since his collection was acquired by the Moreira Salles Institute (IMS) a little over two decades ago, some little-known aspects of his work have been revealed. For example, the exhibition now on display at the institution in S\u00e3o Paulo broadens our knowledge of his cartography production. An intrepid traveler, it’s now known that half of his photographic work was actually unrelated to the city of Rio. His multiple interests, which included scientific knowledge, also emerge at the show. Bringing together over 300 items, including both documents and images, as well as work by other photographers, the exhibition is open to the public until August 25.<\/p>\n
\u201cFerrez was the photographer who most traveled Brazil during the nineteenth century. Not only physically, but also in his photography,\u201d says Sergio Burgi, IMS photography coordinator and curator of the retrospective, titled Marc Ferrez: Territory and Image<\/em>. \u201cOne of our goals was to take an accurate look at the work he did outside of Rio.\u201d It was a major challenge, considering the size of the collection to be researched, about 9,000 images, which included a set of 4,000 large-format glass negatives. In total, Ferrez’s collection, organized by the photographer himself starting in 1873, then maintained by his family until the institute acquired it in 1998, comes to some 15,000 items. \u201cWe wanted to try to think of his camera and its relationship to the documentation of the Brazilian territory,\u201d explains Burgi. \u201cIn the field of social documentary, for example, Ferrez was the first to record the Botocudo people of southern Bahia, and in the period before Abolition, he produced important photographic documentation of individuals enslaved on coffee farms in the Paraiba Valley, exposing the system’s brutality.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>