Brazil

“Curves make up the entire Universe,” Oscar Niemeyer, Brazil’s star architect, once said. Photographer and director Olaf Heine met the legendary architect shortly before his death. Since 2010, the well-known portrait and fashion photographer has been tracing the soul of Brazil and showing its sensual joie de vivre with a great deal of sensitivity for shapes and textures.

In his newly revised photo book Brazil, Heine contrasts the Brazilian landscape and architecture with the curves of the people – surfers, dancers and beautiful women. He deliberately dispenses with the otherwise stereotypical colours and provides an unusual black and white view of Brazil.

However, Heine is not only interested in the wealth of curves in the architecture and the bodies, but also in a continuation in life: Everything is flexible and in constant flux. From the intensity of longing to the lightness of forms, Olaf Heine shows us a fascinating country in all its diversity, beauty and melancholy.

In his works, Heine depicts the place of longing that the first generation of Brazilian modernists created in architecture, literature and music in the mid-20th century as an aesthetic expression of a social, political and urban society that was undergoing positive change. A wishful thinking and supposed utopia that many people look back on with longing, especially in the current context.

The coffee table book Brazil is the epitome of Brazilian saudade, the longing and wanderlust for the tropical beauty of nature, the lively cities and unique people. For all Brazil fans, this illustrated book is a wonderful gift to immerse themselves in the country and its optimistic way of life again and again, free of clichés.

With texts by Oscar Niemeyer, Ruy Castro, Marcelo Camelo and Matthias Harder.

Text in English, German, French and Portuguese.