Pesquisa FAPESP magazine features an article about the exhibition "Crossed Trajectories"

Exhibition connects the trajectories of Claudia Andujar, Lux Vidal and Maureen Bisilliat

Now in their nonagenarians, they settled in Brazil in the 1950s and produced a vast photographic collection on indigenous themes.

In 2015, anthropologist Sylvia Caiuby Novaes was leaving the cinema when a scene caught her attention. She saw photographers Claudia Andujar and Maureen Bisilliat and anthropologist Lux Vidal walking together down Augusta Street in São Paulo, arms intertwined. “This image inspired me to investigate the affinities between those three women,” recalls Caiuby Novaes, a professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of São Paulo (USP).

The idea gave rise to the research project “Photographs and trajectories: Claudia Andujar, Lux Vidal and Maureen Bisilliat”, coordinated by Caiuby Novaes, with support from FAPESP, between 2019 and 2022, which resulted in a website and more recently in the exhibition Trajetórias cruzados, on display until February 2025 at the Centro MariAntonia at USP. “They have several things in common that go beyond the fact that they are now in their nonagenarians”, says Caiuby Novaes, who curated the exhibition with anthropologist Fabiana Bruno, deputy coordinator of the Anthropological Laboratory of Writing and Image (La’grima) at the University of Campinas (Unicamp) and a collaborating researcher at the Department of Anthropology at USP.

According to the curators, the intersections begin in childhood: all three were born in Europe in the 1930s, a time when totalitarian regimes such as Nazism were on the rise. Swiss-born Andujar, for example, grew up between Hungary and Romania (see Pesquisa FAPESP issue no. 276) and, during World War II, her father and his paternal family, of Jewish origin, were sent to the concentration camps of Auschwitz, in Poland, and Dachau, in Germany. Vidal was born in Germany and spent most of his childhood and youth in Spain and France. “His family moved several times because of World War II and the Spanish Civil War,” says Bruno. British-born Bisilliat lived in several countries, such as Denmark, Colombia and Argentina, as a child because of her father’s profession, who was a diplomat.

The passage through New York before settling in Brazil is another common point in the trajectory of the three women, who lived and studied in the North American city from the 1940s onwards. “Claudia attended Hunter College, where she began painting canvases inspired by abstract expressionism,” says Bruno. “At the same time, Lux received a bachelor’s degree in arts from Sarah Lawrence College, where she studied anthropology, literature and theater. And Maureen, who began painting in 1952, in Argentina, studied five years later at the Arts Students League, also in New York.”

Bisilliat, who had already been to Brazil in the early 1950s, moved permanently to the country at the end of 1957. “Claudia arrived in 1955. When they came to live here, they both abandoned painting and began to dedicate themselves to photography,” says Caiuby Novaes. In the 1960s, they both began to work as photojournalists for magazines such as Realidade, published by Abril. The essay Caranguejeiras (1968), which Bisilliat did for Realidade, dates back to this period and records a group of women crab collectors in Paraíba – some of the photos can be seen in the exhibition. “Since the 1950s, they have traveled extensively throughout Brazil and South America, including alone, which was not so common at the time. It is enough to remember that it was only with the Statute of Married Women, in 1962, that women began to have the freedom to travel unaccompanied in Brazil,” continues the anthropologist.

In addition to their work in photojournalism, the curators highlight another contribution made by the duo. “Claudia and Maureen played an important role in introducing photography into Brazilian exhibition spaces, such as museums and exhibitions, such as biennials, especially in the 1970s,” says Caiuby Novaes. “Among other things, they became members of the Photography Sector Committee at MAC [USP Museum of Contemporary Art] in 1970.”

Both Andujar and Bisilliat were awarded FAPESP grants to carry out research projects. Due to this support granted between 1976 and 1978, the former continued the photographic record of the Yanomami, which she had begun in 1970, during a project for the magazine Realidade, and also continued collecting drawings made by them. An enthusiast of Brazilian literature and popular culture, Bisilliat received grants for “Existence of the magician in Brazilian reality: Mario de Andrade. The magical presence in Brazilian reality: Roger Bastide”, in 1981, and “Brazilian popular clothing: Devolution, freely inspired by the writings of Mario de Andrade”, in 1984.

Of the three, Vidal (see Pesquisa FAPESP issue no. 251), who is a professor emeritus at USP, has the career most closely linked to the academic world. After arriving in São Paulo in 1955, she taught at the Alliance Française and the Liceu Pasteur, and in 1967, she returned to study anthropology at USP. Two years later, she became a professor at that educational institution and from then on developed research with several indigenous peoples, especially the Mebengokré-Xikrin, from Pará. “Over the decades, Lux took around 5,000 photos, which are kept at the USP Image and Sound Laboratory in Anthropology. Some of the material on display was published in her books, but until then it had never been seen in large format,” says Bruno.

Divided into three rooms, the exhibition features around 300 photographs, Xikrin and Yanomami drawings, as well as the video Aqui é o mundo [Here is the World], directed by Maíra Bühler, which records a meeting between the three photographers at the end of last year. Fifty percent of the images on display are about indigenous themes and reflect a strong connection with this issue. Bisilliat, who first visited Xingu National Park in the early 1970s, published two books about her travels: Xingu (Editora Práxis, 1978) and Xingu/Território tribal (Livraria Cultura Editora, 1979), the latter in partnership with indigenous scholars Claudio Villas-Boas (1916-1998) and Orlando Villas-Boas (1914-2002). She also directed the documentary Xingu/terra (1981), in partnership with Lúcio Kodato.

However, involvement with indigenous issues is not limited to recording images. In the late 1970s, Andujar helped found the Commission for the Creation of the Yanomami Park (CCPY), which fought for the recognition of the territory of this people, which was only approved in 1992. Vidal contributed to the creation of several indigenous organizations, such as the Pro-Indian Commission of São Paulo, in 1978.

Some of Vidal's images were restored for the exhibition based on scientific initiation research funded by FAPESP by photographer Isabella Finholdt, at the School of Communications and Arts (ECA) at USP, under the guidance of photographer João Luiz Musa. The study, which was part of the project “Photographs and trajectories: Claudia Andujar, Lux Vidal and Maureen Bisilliat”, investigated, for example, ways of treating analog images produced between the 1960s and 1980s.

In total, the photographic collection of Andujar, managed by Galeria Vermelho, Bisilliat, now housed at the Instituto Moreira Salles, and Vidal, contains more than 50 thousand images. “In relation to the indigenous issue alone, they recorded several themes such as daily life, hunting, houses, villages, rituals and body painting,” says Bruno. “Deciding which of these images would be included in the exhibition was one of our greatest challenges,” he concludes.

Photographs and trajectories project: Claudia Andujar, Lux Vidal and Maureen Bisilliat (nº 18/21140-9); Regular Research Grant Modality; Principal Investigator Sylvia Caiuby Novaes; Investment R$ 122,099.06.

This text was originally published by Pesquisa FAPESP under the Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND license. Read the original here.