Vincent Catala Photographs a Brazil in Suspension
Through 78 photographs brought together in the book Île Brésil, the photographer explores the anonymous outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and Brasília. A long-term project carried out over 10 years.
By Jonas Cuénin. Photographs by Vincent Catala.
Little, or almost nothing, in Vincent Catala’s images points to an immediately identifiable place. No postcard views, no spectacular signs, no clichés of the Brazil we imagine. The photographer lingers on discreet, inhabited, silent territories. Ordinary spaces, far removed from dominant representations, where another reading of the country unfolds. Having lived in Brazil for fifteen years, Vincent Catala conceived Île Brésil as an experience of duration, inseparable from his own life.
The project unfolds across three main territories: the western zone of Rio de Janeiro, a vast peripheral area far from the city’s familiar images; Greater São Paulo, the immense urban ring of Latin America’s largest metropolis; and Brasília, a peripheral capital by definition, designed as a model but lived in through its margins. These spaces were tirelessly traversed by Vincent Catala, on foot, by bus, or by motorcycle. Neither wealthy nor destitute, sparsely populated, they form a landscape found everywhere in Brazil yet rarely represented. A geography of waiting, of in-betweenness.
Photographed through a combination of rigorous large-format protocols and more instinctive wanderings, the images release a muted tension. The light, often soft or grazing, reveals as much as it conceals. Bodies appear motionless, as if suspended in a frozen present. Architectures seem provisional, landscapes without center or boundary. In these places, isolation is not only spatial. It becomes mental.
Vincent Catala does not seek to explain. He portrays a Brazil caught between an unresolved past and an uncertain future, where despair does not erupt but settles in durably. The book condenses this decade of work into three sections, echoing the territories traversed. Their articulation invites an open reading, respecting the stretched temporality and the immensity of the photographed spaces.
A member of the VU’ agency, Vincent Catala situates his work within a documentary approach attentive to duration and complex territories. Photography, text, video, and sound installation resonate with one another in his practice, which questions the human condition through specific yet universal places. Begun in 2013 and completed in 2023, the series Île Brésil is presented in this monograph published by Dunes Éditions, before being exhibited in its entirety at the Musée de la Photographie de Charleroi in 2026.
Île Brésil, by Vincent Catala, is published by Dunes Éditions and available for €90.
