Following up on our last two issues for Paris Photo online, we present you the third and final part of our edition on the Foto Cine Clube Bandeirante (FCCB) RocioSantaCruz works actively with the family archive of numerous FCCB artist and is an international referent for the study and dissemination of Fotoclubismo. Here we introduce you to the work of Rubens Teixeira Scavone.
Rubens Teixeira Scavone (Itatiba, 1925 – São Paulo, 2007)
The work of Rubens Teixeira Scavone acts as a meeting point for two artistic disciplines: literature and photography. As a pioneer of science-fiction in Brazil, he was a prominent figure for the Paulist avant-garde, he won the Jabuti Prize for Fiction in 1973 and was the President of the Academia Paulista de Letras, an organisation founded in the early twentieth century with the aim of disseminating Brazilian literature, especially to young audiences. His fierce social commitment with cultural accessibility finds a precedent in his mother, writer Maria de Lourdes Teixeira, and a successor in his son, the photographer Marcio Scavone, who is recurrently photographed as a child in Teixeira Scavone’s work. Scavone junior is, additionally, a prominent figure in Brazilian contemporary photography and author of some of the most iconic celebrity portraits of our time. Amongst them, the one he took of his father.
Rubens Teixeira Scavone. O menino o robô. c. 1952
Teixeira Scavone’s photography unfolds within the aesthetic parameters of the FCCB and reflects a common interest in abstraction, sharp contrasts and geometric figures. His work is the result of a profound narrative investigation, based on his search for experimental rhetoric and new visual effects, which grants his compositions a literary quality. Acting as short chapters, or photo-novels, his photographs open a portal into the world of narrative, all through the eyes of a writer, and through the words of a photographer.
Marcio Scavone. Space Portrait RTS. 1969
His work is included in the major collection of Museu de Arte de São Paulo(MASP) and the MoMA of New York, where it’ll be part of the exhibition Fotoclubismo. Brazilian Modernist Photography, 1946-1964from March to June 2021.