Valdir Cruz.
(Brazilian, b. 1964)
Yanomami Series #1, Portrait of Boy from Demini-Teri, Brazil.
1995.
Signed and numbered # 6/25 in pencil on the recto of board.
Printed circa 1997.
Silver gelatin print with selenium toning.
Excellent condition.
12" x 18"h.
Archival frame is 22"w x 28.5"h.
Provenance: Reader's Digest Collection, their label verso.
The Mike Dale Collection.
Est. $1,000-$2,000.
Ship: $65

Exhibited: Throckmorton Fine Art, Inc., NY, Faces of the Rainforest, 1997 - 1998.
Illustrated: Vicki Goldberg, text, Valdir Cruz: Faces of the Rainforest, New York: Throckmorton Fine Art, 1997. Cover of the publication and on page 35.
Photographs and Journal by Valdir Cruz, Faces of the Rainforest. The Yanomami, powerHouse Books, New York, NY, 2002, with support from a "publication subvention" from the Guggenheim Foundation (2000) to ensure publication of Faces of the Rainforest in a book format. The image is on page 2 opposite the dedication of the book to the Yanomami of Brazil and Venezuela.

Valdir Cruz was born in Guarapuava, in the Southern State of Parana, Brazil in 1954. Cruz, who has lived in the United States for more than thirty years, became interested in photography in the late 1970s through George Stone's work for National Geographic and began to study photography at the Germain School in 1983. He then received technical and aesthetic training from master photographer George Tice. The bulk of Cruz's photography work has focused on the people and landscapes of his native Brazil. In 1996 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for Faces of the Rainforest, a project documenting the life of indigenous people in the Brazilian rainforest.

The Yanomami, indigenous people who live in the rainforests of Brazil and Venezuela, find their culture constantly threatened by the "civilized" world. Agricultural interests have razed their forest hunting grounds. Illegal miners, in search of gold, have polluted their waterways. Contact with outsiders has brought them disease and exploitation. Cruz's haunting black and white images document a people whose way of life is, sadly, disappearing. The photograph offered here is of a boy from Demini-Teri, Brazil. His face is painted as he prepares to participate in a tribal celebration.

Cruz is represented in the permanent collections of numerous institutions, including the Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP), Brazil; The Museum of Modern Art, New York City; and the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., among others.