For over four decades, photographer Valdir Cruz has been exploring and documenting the landscape and people of Brazil. Just like Gauguin’s famous painting, these photographs raise fundamental questions: Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?
Exploring and documenting the Brazilian landscape for over 40 years, photographer Valdir Cruz will present a comprehensive view of the power of water and the grandeur of nature in a solo exhibition in New York. The exhibition will take place from May 25 to July 10 at the Consulate General of Brazil in New York (225 East 41st St). An opening ceremony will be held on May 25 at 6 PM.
The magnetic center of Cruz’s work is the state of Paraná in southern Brazil, where the vast network of tributaries and waterfalls blurs the borders between Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay. Especially in Iguaçu, with its gigantic waterfalls, one feels the very land in constant motion.
The photographer’s commitment to preserving this landscape stems from his personal connection to it. He was born in Guarapuava, in the state of Paraná, and his artistic encounter with water is existential. His waterfalls have a transparent density, like a cloud. These photographs result from decisions based on a sense of form, a commitment to expand the characteristics of black and white film, and a 
unique ability to represent his intuitions about the natural world, creating a representation that has its own impactful presence. The photographs are immersive — evoking a lush, liquid, and material world.
Water nurtures his other theme, the trees and forests of Brazil. Cruz has explored important ecological zones, especially in the Serra da Bodaquena region of Mato Grosso do Sul. From his hometown to the Amazon basin, he has witnessed the battle lines between human exploitation of nature and its preservation. But his fascination with trees reaches the depth of poetry. Cruz delights in the intricate structure, the chaos of forms, the vegetative disorder that is the natural world. He directs his keen gaze to the trunks and roots of the tallest trees. As with the waterfalls, his camera creates a second nature, with extreme viewpoints and an exaggerated sense of imposing growth. The instantaneous and the infinitely slow, the microsecond and the accumulation of eons that Cruz represents in his two photographic series ultimately unite in a comprehensive vision of the natural process. As an artist and human being, for Cruz, the strongest form of defense is to recognize the profound reality of the natural world. This encounter is also the place where self-understanding begins.
In the last twenty-seven years, he has published eleven photography books.