Evandro Teixeira, the legendary figure who has defined Brazilian photo journalism for the last 50 years is an amalgam of varied elements. He is the protagonist of a novel of magic realism, a dashing folk-hero with a streak of daring and fearlessness reminiscent of the inhabitants of the rural Northeast of Brazil, an omnipresent figure in Carioca social and political history, a bon vivant, a devoted patriarch, a patron of the arts, and a tireless chronicler of the particularities of national and local Brazilian news, major international events, and global social and political history. He is a grand raconteur who's wit is in evidence throughout is photographs and in his conversation. He is an innovator bent on preserving the heritage of the backlands of his beloved native Northeast and has recreated the imagery of great literature like Euclides da Cunha's "Rebellion in the Backlands". Evandro's oeuvre includes his exquisitely artistic powerful visual essays on subjects ranging from the rebellion in Canudos, Brazil, one hundred years after its occurrence, the death of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, and Brazil's political protest uprisings of 1968 and its aftereffects 50 years later. Everything has been and continues to be recorded with one or another of his Leicas' as he has moved from analog to digital photography. Although he has an infinite respect for tradition he is a man of the present and the future, constantly evolving. This brilliant documentary photojournalist and artist originally, as a teenager, wanted to be a filmmaker,and his work often seems like freeze frames from a movie. Fittingly he is the subject of a full length feature film: Instantâneos da Realidade, 2003, directed by Paulo Fontanelle. Evandro's career envelopes at once the history of daily life, an everyman's story through the years recorded for posterity, and a collective history of the last 50 years with more to come.

Martha Takayama, Tepper Takayama Fine Arts

For more information on Evandro Teixeria visit:

Evandro Teixeira: Fotojornalismo

Adorocinema

Academia Brasileira de Cinema

Carlos Drummond de Andrade in front of Evandro

Poem by Carlos Drummond de Andrade