COUNTRY: BRAZIL
CITY: Curitiba, PR
YEAR: 1991 - 1993

With the camera as a strategic instrument for disclosure and interpretations, photographer Valdir Cruz has produced this complex and extended portrait of the Catedral Basilica de Nossa Senhora da Luz dos Pinhais, a neo-Gothic structure in Curitiba, in the state of Paraná, in southern of Brazil. Commemorating the occasion of the cathedral’s centennial, these studies evidence the attentiveness of an unaffected pictorialism, a specific clarity of vision, and the high quality of the printed image itself...This engagement recalls the tonal and compositional authority characteristics of the work of certain nineteenth-century photographers, a resonance deriving in part from Cruz’s choice of view or field camera, and from his engagement with specific darkroom processes, including the execution of palladium prints. The aesthetic and technical qualities of his prints are apparent with even casual observations, but the language of his imagery – his attention to the field beyond the lens and his intentions as an artist – is another matter.

Edward Leffingwell