Marcel Gautherot (1910-96) is regarded by many as one of the most significant French photographers. Yet his work is relatively little known and even less published. The most famous part of his work is the body of some 3,000 images documenting the construction of Brasilia 1958-1960. This, and other images he took of this extraordinary place until the 1970s, is widely appreciated as a high point of 20th-century architectural photography. Gautherot began an education in architecture but very soon took up photography as well. He travelled extensively in France and abroad and visited Brazil and Peru for the first time in 1939, before being drafted into the French army on the outbreak of World War II. Upon demobilisation in summer 1940 he returned to Brazil and made Rio de Janeiro his home for the rest of his life. The new book Marcel Gautherot: The Monograph is the first ever comprehensive book on Gautherot’s entire work as a photographer. It features some 200 of his striking pictures from all stages of his career, superbly reproduced in tritone printing. The images are complemented by essays on his affinity for modern architecture, his contribution to the history of photography, and on his attachment to Brazil.
AUTHORS: Jacques Leenhardt is an art critic and director of studies at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris.
Michel Frizot is a curator and scholar of the history and theory of photography.
Samuel Titan is director of the Instituto Moreira Salles in Rio de Janeiro, a nonprofit organisation with cultural centers and galleries throughout Brazil with the aim of promoting the development of Brazilian cultural projects, including photography, literature, music, and the visual arts. 200 colour illustrations