Claudia Andujar
1931 (Neuchâtel)
Living in : Sao Paulo
Working in : Sao Paulo
Artist's webSite
For a time a guide at the United Nations, she tried her hand at abstract expressionist painting, but it was at the age of 24 that she discovered photography, in Brazil where she joined her mother in São Paulo. Equipped with her camera (soon a 35 mm), Claudia Andujar began to explore the regions of Brazil, their geographical and cultural diversity, a vehicle of a powerful shock for the natives of Europe. "Another world opens up," writes Lévi-Strauss at the same time in his Tristes Tropiques, "always dominated by an impression of immensity... Europe offers precise forms under a diffuse light, here the role of the sky and the earth is reversed... the sky with its extravagant clouds is the region of forms and volumes, the earth keeps the nobility of the first ages." Claudia Andujar shows her pictures to newspapers, in Brazil or in New York. A portfolio left at MoMA in 1959 earned her a note from the unblinkered photographer and curator Edward Steichen: "You have a very discerning eye." Is it the taste of those "early years"? Claudia Andujar soon leaned towards indigenous populations, staying with the Xikrin in southern Parà or the Bororo women of Mato Grosso, from whom she made a series on Brazilian families.
Portrait: © Victor Moriyama
Living in : Sao Paulo
Working in : Sao Paulo
Artist's webSite
For a time a guide at the United Nations, she tried her hand at abstract expressionist painting, but it was at the age of 24 that she discovered photography, in Brazil where she joined her mother in São Paulo. Equipped with her camera (soon a 35 mm), Claudia Andujar began to explore the regions of Brazil, their geographical and cultural diversity, a vehicle of a powerful shock for the natives of Europe. "Another world opens up," writes Lévi-Strauss at the same time in his Tristes Tropiques, "always dominated by an impression of immensity... Europe offers precise forms under a diffuse light, here the role of the sky and the earth is reversed... the sky with its extravagant clouds is the region of forms and volumes, the earth keeps the nobility of the first ages." Claudia Andujar shows her pictures to newspapers, in Brazil or in New York. A portfolio left at MoMA in 1959 earned her a note from the unblinkered photographer and curator Edward Steichen: "You have a very discerning eye." Is it the taste of those "early years"? Claudia Andujar soon leaned towards indigenous populations, staying with the Xikrin in southern Parà or the Bororo women of Mato Grosso, from whom she made a series on Brazilian families.
Portrait: © Victor Moriyama