Île Brésil
Île Brésil is Vincent Catala’s first monograph, the culmination of ten years of patient exploration in the anonymous outskirts of Rio de Janeiro’s West Zone, Greater São Paulo, and Brasília. Living in Brazil for fifteen years and a member of Agence VU’, Catala turns away from official representations and familiar clichés—whether exotic, joyful, prosperous, or miserabilist—to reveal a lesser-known face of the country, where the everyday urban landscape resonates with a universal scope.
These peripheral spaces, endlessly crossed on foot, by motorcycle, or by bus, resist the postcard image. Neither poor nor wealthy, vast yet sparsely populated, they carry a strange familiarity where isolation feels both geographical and psychological. The metaphor of insularity runs through the project: places caught in suspension, frozen in a perpetual present.
Balancing large-format precision with instinctive wanderings, Catala captures the ambiguity of a continental country where light both reveals and conceals. In a text written for Île Brésil, Brazilian author João Paulo Cuenca interprets these images as a reflection of a nation trapped in its unresolved past, deprived of revolution, and confined to a static temporality.
Structured in three sections echoing the territories explored, the book restores the expanded temporality and immensity of these landscapes. More than a collection of images, Île Brésil is a sensitive puzzle, a vision of a country suspended between fatalism and a deep desire for change.
THE STORY
THE BOOK
French — English —Brazilian Portuguese
188 pages
78 color photographs
Format: 20 x 32 cm
Graphic Design : Kakkalakki studio
Laminated and silkscreen-printed transparent dust jacket
Sewn binding with exposed stitching and 3 accordion-folded sections
Papers:
- Gardapat Klassica
- Munken Print Cream
Print run: 1000 copies
ISBN: 978-2-9576132-3-6
THE PHOTOGRAPHER
French photographer born in 1975, Vincent Catala has been a member of Agence VU’ since 2014. He lives and works in Brazil.
A self-taught photographer, he became a professional in 2006. Both in his commissions and in his personal projects, he explores the relationship between individuals and their environments, capturing their subjective representations: solitude, freedom, presence in the world… Attentive to long-term approaches, he focuses on specific territories—at once highly defined yet complex—that offer a particular vision of the world, where the idea of universality emerges through encounters and a given geography.
Since 2013, he has been portraying a Brazil marked by doubt and disillusionment, from the western zone of Rio de Janeiro to Greater São Paulo, and in 2022, Brasília. Alongside his long-term personal projects, he also takes on public and private commissions related to urbanism and architecture, in Brazil as well as in Europe. For both French and international press, he produces portraits—particularly of figures from Brazilian cultural and underground scenes—as well as reports on daily life in Brazil.
