1500 Gallery presents São Paulo Ambiguous, an exhibition of color photographs of the city of São Paulo by Brazilian photographer Claudio Edinger, shot on film with a Sinar 4×5 large format camera, using selective focus. The 12 photographs in the exhibition are part of a series of over 30 images depicting Edinger’s hometown, a complex city of contrasts and contradictions.

Claudio Edinger was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1952 but raised in São Paulo. He began taking photographs in the early Seventies, while studying economics at Mackenzie University in São Paulo. In 1975 he had his first solo exhibition, at the São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP), with photographs of the Martinelli Building, a vertical slum in downtown São Paulo. The following year he moved to New York City, where he lived until 1996.

Over the course of 20 years spent in the United States, Edinger developed numerous personal photographic essays. He also worked as a freelance photographer for Brazilian and North American newspapers and magazines such as Veja, Time, Newsweek, Life, Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, and The New York Times Magazine, among many others. In 1977, he studied under legendary photographer Philippe Halsman (1906–1979).

Claudio’s work is present in the largest and most important private photography collections in Brazil, as well as in the collections of the following: AT&T Photo Collection, The International Center of Photography (Cornell Capa’s private collection – Hassidic Jews), Museu Metronòm (Barcelona), Equity International Photo Collection, Higashikawa Collection (Japan), Visa Pour L’Image (France), São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP), São Paulo Museum of Contemporary Art (MAC-USP), São Paulo Museum of Modern Art (MAM-SP), Museum of Images and Sound (São Paulo, Brazil), Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, (Brazil), Itaú Cultural (Brazil) and Curitiba Museum of Contemporary Art (Brazil).