Mario Cravo Neto

Mario Cravo Neto, born in Bahia, Brazil, in 1947 and trained as a sculptor, has created a body of photographic work that is closely bound to the culture of his homeland in north-eastern Brazil. In his pictures he refers not only to the legacy of the Yoruba culture, rather he also reflects in the bodies and faces as well as the postures of his subjects the cultural, ethnic and racial interminglings of the native population. The photographs reveal an energy that is today still strongly rooted in myth. They are the staged expression of a state of mind informed by religious experience. The exotic qualities of the Afro-Brazilian culture, the magic of tribal shamanism and the baroque sensibility of Portuguese culture all melt into unity in his pictures. An exchange of powers takes place between living and nonliving matter, body and soul exist in a constant state of tension and continuing interplay between the erotic and the spiritual.