Starting March 30, 2011, 1500 Gallery will be exhibiting color photographs of Berlin by Brazilian photographer Tuca Vieira, the 2010 winner of Brazil’s Premio Porto Seguro, that country’s most important annual art photography prize.

Drawing upon the formal rigor and architectural inspiration of the Düsseldorf School, Vieira creates his own distinctive style. The photographs depict functional architecture but in a nocturnal setting, with sensual lighting. One could describe it as a “tropicalization” of German photography’s rigidity and formality – “Germany meets Brazil”, to put it in simple terms. Made during Vieira’s 2009 artist’s residency in Berlin, this body of work highlights the contrasts and juxtapositions of “old Berlin” and “new Berlin”, revealing traces of not only divergent prosperity, but also the great battles for territorial and ideological conquest that caused it. If, on one hand, the physical presence of man escapes the viewfinder, on the other it is reinforced by clear evidence of man’s effect on the landscape through monuments and markings, denoting conquests and circumscribing the course of history. From these fragments, the city of Berlin emerges in all its complexity.

Vieira is from Sao Paulo and from 2004-2009 worked as a reporter and photojournalist for the Brazilian newspaper Folha de São Paulo. Since 2002 Vieira has worked on personal projects relating to cityscapes, architecture and urbanism. His work is present in the collections of the Sao Paulo Museum of Art (Brazil), Itaú Cultural (Brazil), and the Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts (Japan), among others. For further information visit www.1500gallery.com.