Valdir Cruz

Valdir Cruz was born in 1952 the city of Guarapuava in the southern state of Paraná, Brazil. He has lived in New York City for decades but his photographic work often concentrates on the people, architecture, and landscape of Brazil. Inspired by images in “National Geographic” magazine, Cruz became interested in photography in the late 1970s. In 1983, he studied at the Germain School of Photography in Manhattan and subsequently with George Tice at the New School for Social Research. After working closely with Tice on two portfolios of the work of Edward Steichen, he concentrated exclusively on his own photographic work.

In 1994, he began his project “Faces of the Rainforest,” to document the life of indigenous people living in the Brazilian rainforest. In 1996, he was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship for that body of work. These photographs were published as “Faces of the Rainforest – The Yanomami” (powerHouse 2002) as well as in a Brazilian edition. His book Valdir Cruz: Carnaval, Salvador, Bahia, 1995-2005” was published by Throckmorton Fine Art, Inc., in New York City in 2005. His work has been widely exhibited and published and is in collections across the United States and internationally in Brazil.