1927-1970 – Joaquim Paiva

“This book is an homage to my mother; it emerged from the autobiographical and visual diaries I have been making since 1998. I soon realized that I almost always marked in my notebooks my mother’s birthday: February 14th; and the date of her death: October 30th. Later, I added the photos of her and my father I took from a family album in 2002 – black-and-white pictures in the midst of the fine red earth of Brasília, the city where I lived and worked for many years. Finally, I have included in this project the notebook in which my father declared his love for my mother, in pictures and words – the only object that was left to me of him, who died before I reached 3 years of age. With the passing of time and the number of diaries I have accumulated (I now have 154), I realized that as an artist, I should put this material together in a book of photographs.”

– Joaquim Paiva. Rio de Janeiro, September 2019

Author: Joaquim Paiva, Rio de Janeiro, 1946, photographer, collector of Brazilian and foreign contemporary photography. Lives and works in Rio de Janeiro since 2014.