Born in São Paulo, Brazil, in 1965, Cássio Vasconcellos continues to live and work in Brazil as a photographer. When Vasconcellos was eight his father acquired a Polaroid SX-70 and it has fascinated him ever since. Vasconcellos studied photography at the Escola Imagem-Ação in São Paulo and began his career as a photographic journalist, working for magazine and newspaper publications, a freelancer for a publishing house, and taking advertising assignments. Shortly after, he set up his own studio specializing in aerial photography and, parallel to this business, developed experimental projects involving interventions aimed at diverting the photographic image from its documentary nature. In 2011 he co-founded Fotospot Gallery, a gallery for contemporary photography, in São Paulo, Brazil.
Read MoreIn 1994 Vasconcellos published the monograph Cássio Vasconcellos: Paisagens Marinhas [Cássio Vasconcellos: Seascapes], collecting composite photographs made up of negative scraps fastened together with adhesive tape and heat, which were then handled in the darkroom in a way that rendered a similarity to engravings. He is also included in the book Blink: 100 Photographers, 10 Curators, 10 Writers (London: Phaidon Press, 2002) and The Polaroid Book (reprint; Cologne: Taschen, 2008). He has been awarded numerous prizes, including the National Prize of Photography by the Fundação Nacional de Arte - Funarte [National Foundation of Art] in 1995 and the prize for the best exhibition of the year by the Brazilian Association of Art Critics (ABCA) for his exhibition Noturnos - São Paulo [Nocturnes - São Paulo], which initiated a book by the same name.
Vasconcellos has exhibited in numerous museums and galleries throughout Brazil and abroad, including Fotofest, Houston, United States; Kunstmuseum, Wolfsburg, Germany; the Museo de Arte São Paulo, Brazil; Mois de la Photo, Paris, France; Photographs, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; and Tepper Takayama Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts, United States. His work is in the permanent collections of the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, France; Fogg Museum of Art, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas, United States; Joaquim Paiva Collection, São Paulo, Brazil; among others.
Text courtesy Art+ Shanghai Gallery.
