Over almost five decades, Mário Cravo Neto explored the image concept in multiple ways. From the first records, at age 16, to the last self-portraits made in the year of his death, Cravo Neto created approximately 96 thousand images. He made photography his poetry to record everyday life, friends and family, innovated with land-art and was enchanted by cinema’s moving image. He dedicated himself to research deeply into his own profession, which was also his great delight. Through the first years of the 21 century he investigated with great curiosity the numeric photography (digital) and so many other possibilities that would fit between the click of the camera and the paper reproduction.

The image collection selection gathers sets made by the artist while alive, which vary from studio monochromatic photography, in Eternal Now, to the colored works where Cravo Neto looked thoroughly into his homeland: Salvador. Of all the exhibitions presented here, we highlight: in 1988, at Palazzo Fortuny, Venice; in 1992, at Witkin Gallery, New York and at Houston FotoFest; in 1995, at Museu de Arte de São Paulo; in 1998, at Fahey Klein Gallery, Los Angeles and Photoespaña, at the Real Jardín Botânico de Madrid, when the artist displayed large format photographic prints outdoors.

With the black and white photos of Eternal Now he achieved great notoriety among the public and specialized critics, having been widely exhibited in several art shows and edited in many books and catalogs, such as: “in the earth beneath my feet”, exhibited at CCBB in Rio de Janeiro; Trance-Territories, installation included in the Black Gods in Exile show by Pierre Verger at Dahlen Ethnologisches Museum, in Berlin, curated by Michael Toss; and Laroyê, where Exú is the scenery incarnated in moving bodies, an book-offering to the powerful orisha and mythic character inside the afro baiano pantheon. In Mário’s words: “Esú, body bay, solitary ship, moored in all of us”.

“Butterflies and Zebras” is his only post-mortem project, exhibited in 2014 at an audiovisual show in Estação Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo. This was Cravo Neto’s last major work with the curator Diógenes Moura, who planned and discussed most parts of the project along with the artist.