PAST EXHIBITION
Julio Bittencourt: Photographs
May 8, 2008—June 15, 2008

Press Release


"In A Window of Prestes Maia 911 Building" is a new photographic series from Brazilian photographer, Julio Bittencourt. This project is based on a  series of windows and the people who live through them. Bittencourt grew up in São Paulo where he got used to people communicating across windows as family and friends lived on top of and next to each other. As such, windows were always an significant part of BIttencourt's life and this is what drew him to create this project.

It's an extremely intimate series not only because of its personal resonance with the artist but also since he had to shoot from within one window to capture the other: "To shoot the families demanded me to enter other people's homes. To be able to photograph a window I also had to be positioned in one. I think that by choosing windows, and only them, I created a 'rigorous game' that I proposed to myself - to look at windows, from windows", says Bittencourt.

The method of this project also allowed Bittencourt to approach the subject of 'urban invasion' within Brazil instead of the common routine of land invasions. This helps to portray the view that this community has of their city and vice versa. "My intention was to show a symbolic and a physical 'barrier', the decay of the materials, the dignity of the people who survive behind them and the decay of a system that doesn't integrate its inhabitants into society but moves away from them making these 'barriers' each time bigger."

Julio Bittencourt was born in Brazil, grew up in São Paulo and spent his adolescence in New York. Although he did not study Photography at College, he began his career at the photo department of Valor Econômico, the major financial publication in Brazil where he worked as a staff photographer and as assistant-editor for four years. He also worked as a photographer for Soico Group in Mozambique, Africa and was part of the collective Cia de Foto based in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

His work has been widely published in some of the most respected magazines world-wide such as Le Figaro Magazine (France), Stern Magazine (Germany), EI8TH Magazine (England), Leica World Magazine (International), LFI Magazine (International), The British Journal of Photography (England), Cicero Magazine (Germany), Archive (International), and Le Monde (France) among others.

Recently, Bittencourt was invited to participate in the 'America at Home' project, created by the same renowned team that published the 'Day in the Life' and 'America 24/7' series. Along with 99 other photographers, this project will turn into a collective book and an exhibition throughout the United States, starting May 2008.

Julio Bittencourt now lives in Sao Paulo, Brazil and divides his time attending clients in the editorial, corporate and advertising markets beyond his photographic projects that are represented by DBA (Dórea Books & Arts) and by Galerie Philippe Chaume in Paris, France.

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