Alair Gomes

A philosopher, art critic and university professor, Gomes (1921-92) was in his 50s when he began to develop a body of photographic work, focusing almost exclusively on the athletic young men to be found on the beach at Rio de Janeiro. This tireless collector of books, pictures and films, who was murdered at the age of 71, decided to transform the thousands of pages of his diaries into images, thereby composing an immense erotic tableau of black and white photographs devoted to the beauty of the male body. Photographs covertly taken on the beach, or with a telephoto lens from the window of his flat, were extensively reworked and ordered in a sequence according to a rhythm or "visual music", resulting in frescos of outstanding visual scale; for example, his "Symphony of Erotic Icons" or "Sonatinas Four Feet". This group of photographs, now preserved at the National Library of Rio, constitutes one of the most original photographic works of the past few decades.